


Short Tails

by Clunkbot



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: /trash/, Animals, Buck - Freeform, Clunkbot, Deer, Doe, Dreaming, Horror, Humans, Humor, Multi, One Shot, Parody, Shock Collars, Short, Tragedy, Trains, War, Wolves, Zootopia - Freeform, panther
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-06-05 00:28:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 29,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6682150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clunkbot/pseuds/Clunkbot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short Tails is a collection of short, one-shot fiction stories set across Zootopia, both in canon and alternative timelines. Stories run the emotional gamete from horror to comedy to tragedy and war drama. This is an ongoing writing project made to experiment with style and narrative. I hope you enjoy. </p><p>Zoot's cover: https://imgur.com/uteGPO1<br/>Drawn by Zoot. Tumblr can be found here (http://rpzoot.tumblr.com)</p><p>My tumblr can be found here:<br/>http://spenderthelastmartian.tumblr.com/</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. "The Skinnymen"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Deer retells his encounter with a human one night at scout camp.
> 
> To enhance your reading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDQFJIHxPzY  
> Drawing by Knight: http://imgur.com/pZnQvN6  
> https://anotherknight.tumblr.com/

“I saw it!”

"Don't start with this story again Travis, hummies ain't real."

“No no, it's true! Remember the scout retreat back in ‘95?”

"The only thing I remember about that was swimming across the lake to the girls camp."

“Right, but you remember when I didn't come back that night?”

"Because you got lost in the woods?"

“LOST AND HUNTED.”

"Ah god, here it comes again. Just euthanize me.” Brett smothered his paw into his face.

Travis scowled. “Listen Brett, I know you don't believe in The Humans, but just ride with me on this one, okay? At least hear me out. I’ve been thinking a lot about this.”

Brett rose from his seat. “Fine. But I need to grab a smoke first.” The panther strolled outside, filling his lungs first with chilled air. He wormed a pack of smokes from the front pocket of his jeans, working on retrieving one with his gaze cast into the stars. Winter always made the night sky look more crisp and vivid. Travis followed up behind him, dragging the warmth of the bar with him. The soft glow of heat against their bodies snapped off as the door behind him came to a standstill.

“Thought you were quitting?” Travis raised an eyebrow at his friend. His body swayed gently in place.

“Thought you were gonna quit getting so drunk after work?”

Travis jabbed a hoof at Brett. “Touch eh my good sir.”

 

“It’s touche.” Brett snapped his lighter shut and sagged his body against the cold walls of the bar.

“Alright, go. Let’s get this over with.”

“So, I find this sweet Doe named Rachel, as you know-”

“Yes Travis, you told everyone a thousand times about Rachel.”

“-And we get to talkin’. Havin a good time, playin spinnnnn the botttlleeee…” Travis slinked forward, his breath a stale breeze of whiskey that offended Brett’s sensitive olfactories. “It gets reallll late, and the lights go out. So the girls want a scary story, because that’s just what you do when you’re at scout camp. I start tellin’ them about The Humans, and the human of Murkman lake.”

“Hold it, we weren’t at Murkman lake. We were at Greylake,” Brett cut in. “And furthermore, this part is different. Where did the rest of the girls come from? It used to be just you and Rachel playin ‘bad touch’.”

Travis groaned and sagged his shoulders. “Let me tell the damn story you overgrown cat.”

Brett pulled on his smoke. “Fine.”

“ANYWAY, I tell them about...THE SKINNYMEN OF THE FOREST.”

“Right, Humans. Forest savages that enslave animals and force them into servitude.”

“That’s them! And they’re real Brett, they’re real!”

“You better start producing proof before I call you a taxi.”

“Fine.I finish the story and Rachel’s just shivering with terror. The Humans are ruthless predat- hunters, I mean. They stalk the forests wearing nothing but the skins and hides of animals they capture. Get’s a doe like her all touchy. Wants a strong buck to hold her close and make her feel safe. So I I say ‘Rachel, I know where I can find a hummie.’ She wants me to show her. Now, I got no intentions ‘cept wantin to look like a big strong buck for this sweet little doe. I say to her ‘There’s some that live in PACKS out in the woods ‘round here, only come out when there’s a full moon. You know the most ingenious part of this plan?”

“There was a full moon that night?”

“EXACTLY!”

Brett rolled his eyes.

“So I take her out in the forest a bit. Places we’ve been to before so I won't get lost. I’m on the lookout, holdin her close, practically calling out to the Humans. I said ‘HEY YOU HAIRLESS WEASELS, WHY DON’T YOU COME BAG A NICE BUCK?’ She keeps asking me stop that because she was getting scared. Cold hooves actually. In retrospect, I don’t blame her, but I was just tryin’ to be a show off you know. She asks me to take her back, but I’m too into this little game to want to stop now.”

 

A car slowed by as it passed the bar. Disposing his first smoke by casting it off into the night, Brett took a second from the pack and lit up.

“Two smokes?” Travis questioned.  
Brett puffed a cloud of ash into the buck’s face. “It’ll turn into a whole pack if you don’t move this along.”

His focus slowly pulled away from him. Travis went silent. He furrowed his brow in concentration, and something close to strain crossed his face. “She left. She got scared. I knew I shoulda turned back with her when I had the chance, but I was stupid, and I was angry.”

“So why didn’t you go back with her?”

“I just told you. I was angry. I thought Rachel might not be so sweet on me, couldn’t trust me to protect her from the skinnymen. So I kept on going, just sweating out that blow to my ego like some dumb kid in a cheap horror film. I shoulda known…” His voice trembled and he hunched forward.

Brett shot his friend a worried look. “You okay man? You gonna be sick?”

“I just shoulda stopped going further out into the woods,” Travis continued, deaf to his friend. His new found anguish came from somewhere that only alcohol or therapy could touch. Some curious deposit of trauma that seemed to elude most other Deer, especially Deer who work as accountants, a relatively comfortable and benign job. His voice was dry and hot. He found that terrible night again in the pinks of his eyelids, lipped tightly together by some haunted memory.

“I was alone Brett. So alone. I thought I knew my way back to the cabins, but I got so turned around in there. It was like a maze. Everywhere you look, trees trees trees trees trees trees. And as I’m walking back in a direction that I think is home, I hear something, something that sounds like a timber wolf, you know, the howls. Only this one is shorter than any of the ones I’v heard. It’s off pitch too. Then another. And another. Like a thousand trumpets I hear this choir from hell singing in undulating pitch and tone, off key and ugly. You know how much those timber wolves like to make a show of their howling.” Travis laughed, if only to keep his nerves steady.

“I start sweating a little bit, looking over my shoulders. But it’s just trees Brett. Trees trees trees trees trees mother fucking TREES! I start moving a little quicker. And the howling follows me. The unholy shrieking and grinding of vocal chords against air keeps closing in behind me, only, see I can’t see ‘em! I can only see these fucking trees! I can’t see the lake, I can’t see the smoke from the bonfires, I mean, thank god the moon was full that night or I’d probably be a goner!”

“Then-” Travis stepped forward, and for a second, Brett was afraid he’d have to stop his friend from leaping into traffic. “In the gap between these two trees...standing there in the distance, watching me…I saw it.”

“You saw what? The human?”

Travis swallowed hard and turned to Brett. His face was sodden and his eyes bugged out of his skull. Remarkably, his voice only trembled. “Not just the human. It was too far away to tell what exactly it was, but I have my theories. It LOOKED like a bunch of wolves to me. A buncha wolves on all fours. The human had a big handful of rope wrapped around their necks, and he watched me, still as the trees. The wolves, or the demons, or whatever they are, they were shivering, not because it was cold, but because they were hungry. I swear to GOD if you could have heard the sound they made. Or if you saw the pit of their eyes, like little flashlights. No color, no character, just hate and hunger. So I screamed.”

“We all heard that and- Cheese and crackers Travis, you wanna cigarette or something, you look like you’re gonna chuck. Here, sit down."

He waved off the already cindering smoke, but did slide back against the wall, running his hooves through his scalp “I screamed and then I saw the human drop the rope. Those things tore off at me, faster than I’ve ever seen before. They come hurtling at me like shadows, so I take off in the opposite direction.”

“Wolves that the humans enslaved chased you?”

“No, no, no no no, not wolves. Those weren’t wolves. I got a look at one of them when I was crossing the meadow. They were leaner than wolves. Less angular, right at the nose.” Travis folded his hooves together on the bridge of his nose to form a crude point. “They were sleek, and thin, and their fur was more like someone's hide. Maybe they were wolves at one point, but whatever those were- they weren’t wolves.”

“So I broke for the river. I knew it had to be somewhere, I didn’t know if they could swim. But I was counting on it. I got lucky, Brett. I got so damn lucky when I fell face first into the river, because I saw them, kicking up sand on the shore. They were angry, their fangs all chipped and ruined. I couldn’t see the mammal in them. They hadn’t ever worn proper clothes by the look of it. They were really were demons or something. Savages!"

“I had to swim to shore. It was hard, but I knew I’d freeze my ass to death or drown if I didn’t get outta the water.” His breathing slowed into controlled puffs. He slowly turned to look up at his friend, who stared down at him in bewilderment. “And…” He sounded on the verge of tears. “It followed me.”

Brett drew another stick from the pack, not even bothering to light it. “Wait, it followed you? What followed you? The demons?”

“The human….” He let the word slither out of him like it was blasphemy. “I was halfway up this hill when I heard something sloshing in the river behind me, so I turned to look back and I saw this shadow with eyes like pinholes working through across the river. It had a- had a spear raised above its head or something, like from a museum sculpture.”

“Did you see what it looked like?”

“No, no. I could only see its outline. But I could tell it was huge, like nothing you’ve ever seen before. Legs like tree trunks, arms like logs. A body carved outta the wood of the forest. He came running at me. I wasn’t sure how he’d covered ground so quickly, but his strides could almost match my own. No sound, no warning. It was like running against a ghost.”

“So, how did you get away?”

“I didn’t. I hid.”

“You hid. You got away.”

“No, because it always knew where I was. I don’t know how. Maybe they have night vision, like a Fox. No matter where I went or where I hid, I could always see those eyes creeping in the dark like two wandering stars. And they always were on me. Every second I have to catch my breath, whenever it got dead quiet ‘cept for my breathing, I would hear a twig snapping somewhere in the forest, and I’d look to where I thought I’d heard it, and I’d see these two little dots of white hot fire moving around slowly, circling me. I’d start running again in the opposite direction, calling for help as loud as I could. Tore my throat after a while, so all I could hear was the wind moving behind me, something evil and old matching my footsteps, his audible breathing getting louder and closer to me with each second.”

“They don’t sleep man. They don’t sleep. They don’t stop or slowdown. They have no weaknesses, no shortcomings. The apex predator. They just wait. They run you out, scream you out, wait until all you can do is wheeze, and that’s when they get you.”

“Right, but I bet a cheetah could outrun a human. I bet you or me could have outsmarted him too.”

“HOW LONG DO YOU THINK HE HAD TO RUN FOR TO CATCH THOSE WOLVES!?”

“Alright, calm down, quit yelling.”

“We’re not talking about a mammal here, Brett! It doesn’t believe in our laws or in our ways. You can’t reason with it-”  
Brett cut in. “Reasoning and outsmarting someone are too different things man.”

The Deer’s breathing slowed and he cast his gaze into the pavement. “You know why I couldn’t outsmart him? Use our ‘evolved intellect’?”

“Because you were scared?”

He slowly nodded. “And because I noticed the whole time, he was leading me downhill-”

“So?”

 

“-towards the river again.”

Brett’s jaw went slack, and the sterile, chewed cigarette took a long dive in silence, at last clattering onto the pavement with a soft *piff*

“It was like…” He swallowed hard. “I’m sorry man, you know I’m not like this usually, but it was like I was prey and he was a predator. Like it was millions of years ago, depersonalized and savaged. I was going to be a piece of meat for his demons and skin for his clothes. I’ve never felt so helpless and alone in my entire life. I couldn’t even scream because my throat was so torn up. I knew he’d planned on it. It was attrition.”

“No, no, it’s fine, how did you get away?”

“I just- I ran. Back up hill, past him in a wide circle. I don’t know how long I ran for, but my body felt broken by morning. Anywhere except the river where his demons were waiting, frothing mad and hungry. I kept going, hiding, stopping, watching his shape move in the dark, glittering with sweat - They have no fur either. They’re bald across their entire bodies, except on their heads. It was unnatural. We played chase for hours, until the first light broke. I ran towards the sun, puking my way till dawn. I don’t know when, but he had stopped following me at some point. Still, I didn’t stop until I hit a highway. Maybe the sound of cars had scared him off. Maybe it was the light. I don’t know, I don’t care.”

Brett had sat down by now and was looking empathetically towards Travis. “So that’s why you came back that day so filthy.”

 

He nodded slowly. “Why I missed roll call, lights out, why I came back in a minivan, man. A MINIVAN! FULL OF SKUNKS!”

Brett sighed and looked up towards the moon, full and bright and so so close to the earth it felt like he could reach out and break a chunk off. “I’m sorry we didn’t believe you man. If you had told us like you did now, we wouldn’t have given you so much shit for so many years.”

Travis didn’t look up. “You still wouldn’t have believed me. I know how crazy it all sounds, and I know that humans are just a campfire ghost story to everyone, but they’re real, Brett. Realer than I want them to be.”

“Well,” Brett hooked his arm around around Travis’ own, and the two of them rose together with Travis stumbling forward. “I do know what’s real, and that’s sleep. C’mon buddy, back inside. I’ll call you a cab.”

Travis shuffled through the doors, leaving only Brett outside, alone in the chill air. The roads had long gone dead and the streetlamps cast an ugly shade of imitative fire on everything. Shadows crawled out towards the panther, long and thin until their shapes became unrecognizable. He shivered and picked up the cigarette that had fallen onto the sidewalk, pausing for a moment to twist it between his fingers and permit his ears to wander in the unnatural dark. Maybe, just maybe, he could hear the convoluted howl of the demons, hear the heavy breathing of the hunter, if only he could listen close enough. The thought made him shiver.

He let the smoke drop again, and he rose, dusting himself off, to stare into the full indomitable light of the moon.


	2. Homecoming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few weeks after graduating from the police academy, Nick finds himself in a very familiar part of town.

The Wilde residence wasn’t in a good part of town, but that wasn’t why Nick had left his uniform on. He used to live this life, scrap in these streets with the same little cretins he’d no doubt be putting into a squad car one day. His nubile fingers dug into his pockets and he managed a subdued yet satisfied grin, breathing in the smells of sewage and unlicensed street food. These sweet spices of underclass life stirred memories far older and more pleasant than the ones he'd made in his adult life. Sure It was rotten, but it was home. He wondered if anyone around here would even recognize him still. He stopped at a small, two story house wedged between concrete mammalian beehives. The house looked a lot more cramped than before, and parts of it were starting to wear away. The concrete steps had been chipped and cracked, the lemon-yellow coat of paint it once wore had faded into a watery urine color, and everywhere else rot and splinters crept at an ever advancing pace towards shoddy and archaic foundations.

He rapped twice on the front door, who’s paint had been eaten away by the years. There was the sound of gentle footsteps, and then a few deadbolts clunking out of place, slinking into repose, followed by the door groaning as it edged open.

“Hello?” A red snout appeared in the gap, followed by a graying old fox, who looked out with a trained apprehension. Her guarded, shamrock green eyes rested on snow banks of white fur. They seemed to peer through the visitor, straining to make sense of his shape. Nick leaned back with a sigh and cracked a smile.

“Hey mom.”

The door rolled open and groaned with pain. Mrs. Wilde stood in the portal with her hands hung limp and her jaw slack. She eyed her son carefully, or, who she thought was her son. An officer by uniform, but a conman and criminal by upbringing. She studied him in silence until her own eyes met his, and in those Emerald mirrors she saw little Nicky again, wearing a crisp scouts uniform, grinning with pride.

“Nick…” She said, but the words wouldn’t come from her dry mouth. She felt dizzy seeing her boy again. Was this her boy still? He looked so different. Handsome, grown up, wearing a smug mask like he’d just pulled off some rich hustle and was living fat off the naivety and kindness of others.

“Mom, I wanted to just drop by. I know it’s been awhile, and I should have called or something, but I-” He paused, unsure of what to say next. He thought this would come easy to him, just like all the others. No matter where he was or who he was with, he always had the next word, dressed up and smeared with honey. 

‘Never let them see they get to you’ his own advice whispered back at him. “C-Can I come inside?” He asked, trying to buy some time. Mrs. Wilde swung aside, her ill fitting dress chasing her starved frame. 

“Thanks.” Nick whispered. He became instantly aware of how aged the house was. Things seemed to be all worn and dusty. Small personal mementos and pictures had aged as much as his mom did. He imagined that they were some kind of friends to each other, wrinkling and cracking while they sipped tea and thought back to older times. The wallpaper had begun to peel and fade, and though the home was quite large for its location in Zootopia, everything in the room felt small.

He paced in silence, feeling for that soft warm center that called itself home. It was here still, in floorboards and walls, if he could only just see the faint outlines of a family of foxes making these arbitrary and impartial structures breath. 

He turned around, surprised to see that his mom had followed behind him, almost as if in a trance. “What- What are you wearing?” She stammered.

“This?” He pinched at his sky blue police uniform and chuckled. “It’s my uniform. I’m a…” he halted, trying to find the right words. “I’m a police officer now,” he said, settling for brevity. 

His mom started forward, her eyes already glimmering with tears. “You’re a police officer?” She repeated, not so much a question, more just affirmation of the fact to herself.

“Well, yeah. I don’t know how much of the news you watch or read, but me and Jud- Officer Hopps helped crack the Night Howler case.” His mother took another step forward, hands trembling. 

“And I wanted you to come to my graduation,” he explained in earnest, “but I didn’t think you’d want to see me after I dropped out on you so many years ago, especially after dad died. I came by to say I was sorry and to tell you that I’m turning over a new leaf but-” He cast his gaze downwards and his eyes clamped shut with frustration. Normally his silver tongue could get him through even this, but he felt in his mouth only some rusted spade with which to dig himself a deeper hole. He sighed out his anxiety. “This was a mistake. I’m sorry mom, I shouldn’t have come here.” Nick turned and made for the door.

He felt his mother’s arms clamp around his midsection, pulling him back against her body. Nick, who’s posture had stiffened against the sudden embrace, drained the last bits of his clumsy apology with a sigh. 

Her hands traced around his uniform, squeezing the fabric between her sharp fingers, delicate enough for a baby. Her chin sunk into his shoulder, and her body began to softly heave. “My baby…” she whispered. “My baby is a police officer...Oh Nicky, I’m so proud of you.”

Nick squeezed her back, his form enveloping hers, his feeble mother inching forward into him and sighing against his breast. He smiled against the bulge in his throat, against the singular jewel of water budding in the wells of his eyes. ‘Never let them see that they get to you’, he repeated to himself, as he let that single tear of his splash quietly onto her back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First posted onto /co/ in a pastebin, written by Clunkbot under the name: Anon


	3. On family, brotherhood and love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An essay written by a fox named Riley, reflecting on his upbringing. 
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7aLPQEfrFE
> 
> Drawing by Knight: http://imgur.com/xO2VbA6

Davis was born a little scrawny, even for a kit, but we all had our deficiencies in the family. The stuffy little apartment we shared felt even more cramped now that he was here, but I didn’t mind. It was full of life and love, despite the fact that the place leaked, the wallpaper peeled on the regular and most of our clothes were patch-work-thrift-store masterpieces, stitched together and into a general size by mom. Like I said, it was love, not materials, that kept us in there. 

Dad was by no means an intelligent man, but he was hardworking, with enough spirit for him and mom to both share. That’s the kind of love they had. If you’ve never seen it, I can try to describe it as someone clinging very desperately to a strong mast on a boat. Something rooted and substantial, even in the worst kind of weather, you know it’d hold. That was how they loved each other. I thought their love was great.

Of course when Davis was still a pup, dad lost his job at the plant. I remember finding out that day when I come home from school and Dad was in the little kitchen with mom, both of them were talking so low I could barely hear them at all. But the deep vibrations of dad’s voice and way it shook and cracked told me something was deeply wrong. For the first and only time in my life, I saw him cry. Just a little bit though, wasn’t any waterworks like with mom. It was so restrained and hurt that I don’t think crying could do his despair justice. He knew exactly what his employment meant for us.

Predators weren’t paid well, and often work was scarce. That was just the reality of those days, and I wish I could say that we found something to get us through it all but that’d be too damn convenient for this essay. Money was always tight, but now things had gotten that much worse for all of us. It takes a goddamn saint of a woman to stretch a budget that thin, and to still tell his little boy that he can have a Christmas, maybe even a birthday that year. I was lucky enough not to realize how screwed we were. I figure this also makes Davis lucky, if only for a little while, until he grew up.

A few month of this roll by, and Davis is still figuring out how his world works, completely unaware that it’s already started to fall apart. He wants to know who his mother is, and why does she nurse him or sing him to sleep. Who his brother is, who’s that young fox asking to help change his diaper or trying to get him to talk. Most of all he wonders who his daddy is. 

I couldn’t remember if the walls of our apartment had grown thinner over time of if they were always this thin and had never been challenged before. I remember hearing mom crying so much. I remember watching Davis grow older and older under the hateful eyes of Dad. I remember coming back from school and being asked by mom to leave for just awhile. I remember dodging trains together at the old tracks to prove how brave we were. I remember how mom would call Davis a blessing. I remember how dad called him a “burden” when he thought we couldn’t hear. He said he was ungrateful accident.

They say foxes mate for life. I won't pretend to know what mom was going through at the time. But I have to wonder, how could someone so deeply in love with another just watch that person destroy themselves, watch them turn cold and bitter and hard. They also say the captain is supposed to go down with the ship, so I guess that explains that. Dad started drinking more, started cursing a lot more too. We all grew up so fast and unhappy as the years rolled by, ceaseless and dull with each month on the calendar counting down in cold black ink the months until the next skipped birthday or meaningless holiday. Davis and dad had reached a point to where they could appreciate their mutual disdain for one another by the time he was 10. That’s a hell of a fucking thing to have to confront at that age. 

There was no home where we lived. So we stayed out as long and as late as we could together, two foxes spitting and cursing each others names. He was scrawny still, but a scrapper, and I couldn’t tell you how many times he told me he hated our family or tried picking fights with someone he shouldn’t have. I always bailed him out when he needed it, because that’s just what brothers were. Partners in crime. He never thanked me for it.

Sometimes I couldn’t believe we were related, the way he acted. But blood made that true. The worst of it all was that I could so much of dad in him. So much anger swallowed down and spat back up. So much bile from a sour gut. He’d hit me sometimes, but it never hurt; I could tell he always wanted it to.

Puberty is a scary time in a young man's life. I can’t speak on behalf of the vixens, but for guys, it was confusing. Always a blush of chemicals in the bloodstream, every day was a reaction to something irreversible that had changed and could never be taken back. It was like watching the best of who you were slipping away in the mirror. I, at least, had happy memories I wanted to preserve. I was angry about what light I saw them in back then, but the rational part of me kept saying how lucky I was to have them. For Davis, it was dull, it was blunted and gray. What could he look back on but neglect, hot breaths full of whiskey and resentment? What could he look forward to but to become the man he hated? As the theme of this essay marches on, foxes share a special bond with one another, and though that bond NEVER breaks, it can be strained, which I think bothered him the most. Somewhere along the line, he had lost the idea of love being possible. Because if even a fox, even his own fucking father, a mammal who was biologically and morally inclined to love him, could stop loving him, how could ANYONE love him? How could love be true? This prospect of a gray life, only made worth living by the sharp flashes of red, was not something even I could stomach, and thankfully I never had to. That wasn’t my burden, though I often did try and get him to share it with me. 

On that day, we found our way far out of the city, walking with an ocean between us, hurling rocks at old cars when the moment struck us. Just had to act our age for a bit. Just needed to be out of the house. Mom had asked us to leave very softly and gave me some money. Not much, more than I thought we deserved, but enough to keep two stupid kids busy. Davis was 13 that day. I think she meant the money as a gift for his birthday. 

He told me how much he hated our family. He asked me how it was fair, the way we were born? That day, he asked me how mom could still love dad. I gave him the old speech about foxes mating for life, and that foxes have a special bond between family. He then asked me why dad couldn’t love him. I told him dad did love him. 

The old train station was weathered and worn, all frosted over with shattered glass and the shadows cast by an intensely hot summer sun. We sat out on the platform, cooling off in the shade of the crumbling roof. This day is so hot and vivid in my mind that I could probably tell you just about every detail, every fine cricket chirp in the dusty forest across from the tracks or exactly the way Davis’ blue eyes had gone all thoughtful and soft when we both just let the day come and go right through us without much fighting or fuss. Time to think, time to ruminate. I remember watching a column of smoke rising in the distance that day and thinking ‘Isn’t this what brothers are supposed to be? Allies in some great war against things we didn’t understand?’ It didn’t feel like that, it felt like we had been at war with each other and everyone since I could remember.

We saw the smoke coming closer, over the trees, and I started to tremble. It was dumb, I know, but I swore, somewhere in the slow pull of the horn and the thumping of pistons, I heard the train calling my name. I saw Davis watching the train roll closer as well, not intending on stopping at the old station. 

He stood up. I thought if he meant to dodge the train, like old times, he’d missed his chance. When he looked at me, and I saw the certainty in his eyes, I knew that wasn’t his intention. I don’t know how he was so calm, maybe he’d planned this for days, or weeks even. He started out towards the tracks with a sprint, but he didn’t get far. I wouldn’t let him move another inch. I put my arms around him and pulled him back, held him tight just like I saw mom and dad do. I remembered how they used to hold onto each other so tight that I thought they’d hurt themselves, so that’s what I did. The train rattled past us, horn blasting with alarm, and he swore if I didn’t let go he’d knock my fangs out. He said he'd knock me on my tail, and that's what he did.

We rolled on the ground, twisting our bodies together in ugly configurations, breathing hot air and curses at one another. We had fought before, but not like this. Claws came out. Knuckles cracked and bled, and skin never felt so soft and pliable when your fist drowned in it. I hit back, and I hit hard, not because I was afraid of him, but because I was terrified of what he’d do if I didn’t win. 

We both ended up on our backs, the train disappearing with a howl in the distance. It still called my name. I can’t imagine what it said to Davis. Maybe it called him a coward, because that’s what he called me, softly heaving on his back, slick with blood and sweat.

I realize now that there’s the family you’re born into, and the family that you make. It’s hard to believe that there’s any good in the world for mammals like us, or that there’s any good for anyone at all. The thing about foxes though, is that we mate for life, and while our love can get buried, it will always exist, just a seed waiting to grow.

I love you Davis. I think about you every day. Thank you for being brave with me. 

\- Riley.


	4. 行きます！行きます！シャイニングアクションキャリバーフォックス！

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> let's do our best okay?????

Nick thrummed his impatient claws into the hospital bed. His legs kicked impulsively, and his head sat on a swivel. He groaned with something between anger and anxiety.

 

“Nick,” He felt tender paws squeeze his own. It was too small for him, but he appreciated the contrast of gray fur against his amber coat. Judy smiled warmly up at him. She was dressed down into her civilian clothes, a mint-colored plaid shirt and some jeans. A real home-grown sorta look. For the first time in weeks she’d gotten time off to come see him, and somehow the idea of him not getting to spend proper time with her during the small window they had together made his heart beat that much harder, made his blood run that much hotter. His jaw sniveled and he fought to keep a jagged fang from slipping out from between his often forcibly pursed lips. 

He felt naked in his scrubs. Everything was always so cold in this hospital, always so crowded. Ever since he got here it was tests and sedation and tests and sedation- none of which were ever voluntary. Things got sticky in his head. He could look back on a particular memory and only recall the slight tingle in his body when the needle went in, or the calming drip of body-temperature saline plugging into his veins, and how monumentally heavy his eyelids became after the plunge. He recalled the tender chirp of his heart-rate monitor, the nurses and doctors crowding over his sprawled body with clipboards while his veins felt packed with sand, body hot enough to turn it into glass. He remembered, briefly, bouts of rage, that were it not for his restraints or the hot flush of morphine derivatives flooding the vascular tubing of his delirious body, he’d have slashed open the throats of everyone in the hospital. 

That was a long time ago. He was better now, a lot more patient, a lot less confused. Though his body had changed in ways he was still discovering. For instance, his claws, which normally slid back into his fingers, had become stiff and immobile. Learning to grasp small, delicate objects with his new, razored appendages often resulted in his sedation. He had developed a temper. Or he always had one and now he couldn’t hide it. His jaw seemed unhinged, everything looked like it could satisfy that constant need for his teeth to drown themselves in something soft and hot. On more than one occasion, he had tried drinking his own blood to sate his lust for the stuff, when the nurses weren’t looking. Again, more urges he didn’t understand that they often sedate him for.

He felt another squeeze against his palm. “You doing alright?” Judy asked. “You look restless. Have you been sleeping enough?”

 

Nick smiled sarcastically. “Oh I’ve been sleeping plenty in here Judy. Probably 18-hours-a-day, when they’re not running tests or taking blood draws.”

She looked away, hiding her expression behind her rapidly collapsing ears. She could do the tough-cop act all day, because that was for survival. When the badge came off though, she was tender, almost motherly. It used to melt his heart like butter. “I’ve been so scared Nick. I was worried the state was going to keep you in here indefinitely.”

He forced some laughter. It didn’t feel natural, but he wanted it to be convincing for Judy. “They can’t keep me locked up Judy, I’m too damn pretty to be in here with all these nurses. Besides, today’s the day!” He tried showing some coy smile, but an ivory fang slipped out, gleaming like a crusted white dagger. Judy squeaked and released his hand, shrinking back from him.

“Judy? I’m sorry, I-” He tried reaching for her, to hold her trembling body, but she had already swallowed hard and had steadied herself. She cleared her throat, if only to break the silence. Police training isn’t just ethics and procedure, afterall. 

“Sorry Nick, I didn’t mean to do that. I just think you just caught me off guard is all. I’m not used to it yet.”

Nick stared dejectedly at the floor. “Yeah, right. Sorry about that.” He was about to say something when they heard two loud knocks at the door, followed by the impulsive turning of the janky metal lock. A honey badger’s snout appeared in the crack, followed swiftly by the rest of his portly body, lab coat swimming along with him. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything important.” He announced.

Nick’s attention snapped to Dr. Ritmeir, and for a second he thought he could feel the hairs on his neck bristling. Controlled breathing and the conscious awareness of the physiological changes occurring in his body allowed the doctor to approach, unaware of Nick’s almost primal anger. 

“Mr. Wilde,” Ritmeir thumbed through some papers. “We have decided that- Oh, hello.” The badger squeaked, his eyes falling on Judy who had inched closer to Nick’s bedside. He extended a paw. “I’m Doctor Ritmeir, the head toxicologist for Zootopia General. You are…” 

“Officer Judy Hopps.” She declared sternly. 

The Honey Badgers eyes shot open. “Officer HOPPS? You mean, the one who-”

“Solved the night howler case?” Judy cut in.

“Well, I was going to say misconstrued the poisonings and implicated myself and every other predator in Zootopia, but yes. It’s nice to meet you.”

Judy’s enthusiasm and sternness seemed to deflate. Nick lurched forward from the bed but caught himself. His sudden outburst earned the attention of Ritmeir, who returned to leafing through the papers. “Well Mr. Wilde, how are we feeling today?”

“Hungry.” Nick absently remarked, before realizing his smart ass could earn him another lengthy hospital stay. He instead opted for some pep. “Feeling like a million bucks doc. I was maybe hoping I could go and take this little lady out for dinner tonight.” He turned to Judy. “How does BuggaBurga sound? You know I always treat you nice.” Judy giggled. “I’ll even let you get a drink.” Nick continued. 

The doctor's expression went cold as he shucked the toxicology report he was looking for out of the stack. “Actually Mr. Wilde, I was just going to discuss that with you today. As you know, your….commitments to finding the Night Howler antidote have been nothing short of staggering. We hope to have a working treatment within the year.”

The room seemed colder and more impartial than before. His heartbeat monitor began chirping quicker. “Doc, I was nearly poisoned. ‘Within the year’ is a long, long time for something that barely even hit me.” Nick tried to reason, tightening up the hospital blanket between his fingers. He thought he might tear a hole in it this time. 

“Nearly poisoned? You’re very lucky that Bellwether’s shot only grazed you. A direct impact, and, well, you probably wouldn’t be nearly as lucid as you are right now.”

“We will, however, be releasing you into the custody of-” the doctor’s announcement was cut short as Nick’s monitor sang like a methemphetic cricket. The doctor scowled. “Now, now Mr. Wilde. Let’s watch that temper. Remember what happens when you get angry?”

It took more than just effort for Nick to calm down. He could feel Judy again squeezing his hand. Something about their contact felt like the dam had sprung a leak, and all the hot anger came trickling out onto her. The monitor paced itself as his chest relaxed. Everything was tense, his whole jaw screwed shut in desperation to contain a feral growl. 

“You’re right. I’m sorry.” He said hotly. “Just tell me what this means for me, Doc.”

“It means you’re a Shonen character now, Nick.ゴゴゴ”

*Muffled j-rock intro playing in the background*


	5. Horses in the sky part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Hey James, what did you do in the war again?"
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yIxOhL6vBI

The bird took us a few miles away from the staging zone. I was on the gun, Rory was at the helm. The hollow whipping sound of the rotor blade chopping air kept us both quiet, though by virtue of radio we could communicate if we wanted. Neither of us did. That’s what the war did to you. Made you feel a thousand miles apart between yourself and another person, even if it was only the steel cage of the chopper that kept you apart.

We took it slow and low. I kept my piece on a swivel, sweeping across the rolling jungle, trying to find any signs of prowlers by searching through canopy. They mostly were on the move at night, the natural oil-slick blackness of their coat kept them moving like shadows. Often they didn’t wear clothes, because the pooling darkness at the base of every tree was enough to submerge themselves in, good for hiding from chopper runs.

Mostly, they walked softly. They seldom spoke with one another, stripped down to their bare pelts, brimming with carved muscle and slick with moisture. Their guns were ratty, their rations were small bugs or strips of meat, but it was more than enough to keep them nourished and to keep our boys on their toes.

Panthers. Predators. An incursion, really, is what they were. Some great influx of political ideology that the poor inhabitants of the southern tips of the world could latch onto. It would provide for them like a mother - You ever seen a grown mammal standing up for his own mother? It can get ugly.

Rory danced a little higher, and I heard his voice crackle through my headset. “See anything James?”

“Nothin.” I lowered the 50 cal and spat a fat wad of chewing grass out the door. I watched it shrink in a blur, swallowed up into the canopy. “They send us out to go toast some prowlers and they won't even tell us where they are?” I asked, not feeling too hot or in love with my country at that moment. 

“Man, you EVER heard of Zootopia doing anything smart?” Rory shot back. We both laughed, and he drove onward, aiming for the sunset. We had maybe 30 minutes of good light left before things got too risky. Being predators, the ‘Prowlers’ had earned their names by skulking at night, taking advantage of our diurnal nature and general lack of Night Vision. Mostly we kept the bunnies hopped up, no pun intended, on some amphetamines, to act as our night watch. ‘Antenna ears’ is what we call them, but HQ calls them ‘code-violations'. They can hear a cricket fucking from two miles out, and a panther squad creeping through the rich underbrush is a whole lot less bashful.

Fishing a cigarette out of my vest, (which is no small task with hooves mind you) I heard Rory’s voice snap in my ear. “Hello, this is God speaking.” I answered his ping. 

“James, eyes on some movement, left side,” he said. My heart skipped a beat. I fumbled with the door, sliding open the steel cage to let the barrel of my 50 poke out like a fox's snout. 

There they were, true as Troilus. A large string of black shapes moving across the forest floor, halfway up this barren hillside, completely unaware of our approach or distance.

“They combatants or civvies?” I asked, squinting hard to see if I could find some cubs or mothers. Prowler's almost exclusively sacrificed their young and reckless males.

“Fuck what they are, man. Light ‘em up.” Rory took us in a fat oval around the column. The more distance the better. “We got maybe 10 minutes of light left before we head back to HQ.”

I hesitated, my hooves pulling anxiously at the trigger but never quite crossing that threshold.  
“Rory, we can’t fire unless we confirm these are soldiers.”

“Here’s your confirmation: I don’t like having my ass hanging out in the dark. If a village was on the move, they would have told command to avoid situations like this.”

I had good reasons for hesitating. Fire on some civvies? We’d get court-martialed for that. Probably go down in the history books as some kind of monsters. I was one second away from telling Rory to fuck off and to fly us back to base when the good lord sent me an answer to my question in the form of a rocket propelled grenade, hissing a tail of clear blue smoke towards our lagging chopper.

Rory banked a hard right. We swung our ass close to the canopy, drawling in a fat circle until he could get my side of the bird all naked and exposed to the Prowler's. We didn’t need to say anything to each other. This was smooth like butter. It was smoother than that. It was like the movement of a well-oiled machine. I felt hot blood in me. My heart chopped louder than the blades of the propeller that swung our steel-whrilie into firing position. The trigger never felt so pliable and soft than when I pointed the nose of my gun down on those heathenish ranks and let my the snub tip of a Marther’s 50 open the floor for discussion.

We talked gunfire along that hill, firing in consistent and timed bursts. I paused to watch the orange tracers dart off into the night, looking like a swarm of corpulent fireflies, before letting another tempest off into the trees. Rory took me on I don’t know how many passes around that hill. When you sit behind the gun for so long, you start to lose grips with reality. Time counts itself in volleys. One volley, pause, two volley, pause, ‘how many volley’s it been already?’, three volley, pause, four volley, pause, five volley, pause. The concerning nature of modern warfare (or modern for the era) is how impersonal sitting behind the gun feels. You start to feel like you’re watching a mammal just pushing an on and off switch. Everything goes dim, even the noise of the gun, even the whirl of the chopper, even the screams. All a galactic mile from where you are. You sit back and watch with one eye through the telescope studying and trying to understand what you're seeing or how it could be this disgustingly easy to disconnect entirely, but you can't. You can't understand a million miles away through the telescope. You can't even understand when its YOUR body pulling the trigger. There are things at work here- things so great and terrible and indicative of our ugly nature that we can only assign an arbitrary and inaccurate word to those things, "War", and I think, deep down as I write this, we still don't understand the meaning of the word we've created. It's a beast so far beyond our control, so feral and untamed, we were kidding ourselves when we picked out the leash for it.

I lost track of time. I let the chatter of machine gun fire and the deafening scream of the propellers swallow me. I had no heartbeat. I had a thrum. I had no blood. I had oil and gasoline. I had no voice. I had tracers and reports and the cold, mechanical language of spent shell casings pushing themselves from my gun and dropping cleanly into the inky dark below. I had no arms. I had pistons and ramrods. I had no fists. I had machined and tooled cartridges rocketing forth like narrow sunbeams from God, to strike with divine fury and anger at his sinful creations. If I had a soul, I woulda shot it without thinking twice. 

We spat copper rain beneath as we walked the chopper along the hill, not caring where we shot or who we hit, acting with something like malevolence, duty and fear. That was our shield. Not the bird, not the gun, it was the two mammals in the damn thing with their teeth clenched and their eyes sharp and their hooves ripe with sweat that went to work. Our tools were simply grandiose, too blunt for the task of cleansing ideological waste from the jungles of Southern islands. It gave new meaning to the word “butcher”.

The passes were fat and slow. Maybe we’d wasted them all. There was no way of knowing for sure, so I just kept the trigger horizontal. I thought briefly of how the bullets took to the panthers, how shredded they must have looked by the time we were finished. Their bodies were muscle and sinew, brimming with necessitated strength and a particular old-world savagery. We’d often joke that if you were going to kill a prowler, you better only shoot once, or you’ll just piss it off. Their flesh ate bullets, softly staggering them back as the lead sank in and dug for slick gold. I thought about the way their bodies would shake and shudder, all stuffed full of lead, sitting in heaps and piles. I thought of how the luckiest bullets skirted the imposing wall of pink and lively flesh and plowed through the soft organs, impartial to vital and non vital organs. I thought of how the ones I hadn’t meant to even fire tore through their skulls, cutting cleanly through the brain of a predator with personality and conscious, at last emerging on the other side, dragging a comet's-tail of memories with it. 

At last I heard the hungry *click* of my gun. And for a while, we hovered above the jungle, sitting in the darkness of a day long passed. The world was quiet. Even the drone of our chopper seemed silent. No birds or bugs or a chorus of the wind - Only the rhythmic *whooh whooh whooh* of the rotor blades, and the soft breathing of Rory coming through crisp as television static on my headset. I thought of home, briefly, of people I could have killed if I were on the wrong side of the war or if I had a pair of fangs. They were dead in piles and mounds of shadow, scattered about that hill, all peppered with bullets and soaked deep with blood. Without a word we departed, silent as the night, traveling above the rolling sea of black and of trees like tourists. 

I was covered in sweat, but I didn’t realize it until we touched down. I felt like I’d just marched through the jungle itself and took on every panther I could. My body ached. My mind was gray and mushy. I don’t know if it was shock, exhaustion or apathy. But I never slept so restless in my life, and I never felt more deserving of that shallow consciousness. Tomorrow would be a new day, with new orders and new patrols. Somewhere, a camp of prey would wake up to knives in their guts, with orange lightning flickering towards them, and it would feel just and good to those who command that lightning or thrust those knives. Tomorrow, I would walk the 50 along some thatched roofs and little huts, splintering them into little pieces, burying the insurgents in a tomb woven by their own paws. Tomorrow the sun would rise, indifferent to the little conflicts we mammals have on this little rock. Tomorrow, those bodies will still lay on the hill where they had been left the night before, and one day, it would be me out in the sun, flies picking at my corpse.


	6. Horses in the sky part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "There's fresh meat in the club tonight  
> God bless our dead marines  
> Someone had an accident above the burning trees  
> While somewhere distant, peacefully  
> Our vulgar leaders sleep  
> Dead kids don't get photographed  
> God bless our dead marines"

Some days are a lot like the nights. They are constant, ceaseless, but above all, silent. Sihn was the youngest of the revolutionaries, too full of passion for his budding state or hatred for the prey he stalked, to be as quiet as the others. 

Two days ago the birds came by and dusted everything in Gowlai. A year earlier, trucks came rolling through the underbrush with red stars painted on the side. The mammals who drove them were a lot like him, spoke the same language, looked the same. But they said that they had a new way of life for him, for his whole village. They began piling out medicine, food, books, things Gowlai hadn’t had in abundance for years. They spoke softly to the ashen faces of the villagers, they wore smiles that could cut clean through the years of hardened grime and resentment.

“This is not a political campaign,” one of them said, hefting a bag of rice towards Sihn. “This is a revolution.” The panther dusted himself off and stood rigid. “Do you love your mother, your father?” He asked, lowering himself to the Sihn’s height. “Don’t you want a better life for them?”

Sihn could only nod. A smile crossed the older panther’s face. He knocked up the brim of his hat. “My name’s Jaygo. And yours, brother?”

“Sihn.” He said, a million miles away. 

Jaygo pulled him close, whispering excitedly into his ear. “I see so much hurt here in Gowlai. I want you to know that we are fighting for you.” He motioned towards the trucks and the older Panther’s unloading supplies from them. Each of them was cleanly groomed, wearing rifles around their backs, hats pulled low embroidered with red stars on the front. “You see my brothers here? We only want to help.”

Sihn kneaded the bag of rice between his paws. “Where did you get this?” He asked. 

“From the capital. We took it with us-”

“You stole this?” Sihn’s eyes went wide.

Jaygo laughed again. “No, no. It was always ours. We took it back. It’s yours. It’s for everyone now.” He said, leaving the young panther with a slow punch on the shoulder. “Go on, bring that home with you. We are only giving back what is rightfully yours.”

 

They moved slowly, single file. Just enough daylight left to safely get everyone out of the village before night fell and the Zootopian’s with their croaking choppers would crest the smokey hills. Sihn looked behind him where he thought to see smoke rising from the thatched clearing in the forest. His body was tender and young, just beginning to fill itself vigor for the coming night. He hefted the RPG on his shoulder, a stockpile of ammo slacking into his back. Had he not been armed he’d be toting bags of rice, strips of meat, clothes for the village, anything they could use to make the relocation any easier. 

“You are old enough now to fight for your people.” Jaygo said, passing him the weapon. Even to his youthful body the whole apparatus was enough to make him walk with a gait. 

Sihn had to hold it with both paws. With time, training, and nurturing the seed of national pride in him, the burden of his weapon became less and less. His body grew up next to the RPG, and when he could spare it, he would walk with the girls under the broad leaves of the forest. Nothing felt out of his reach back then.

When the war started, he had been the first to volunteer, presenting his RPG like a pledge to the cause of the new order. He would be Sihn, the defender of his people. He thought he would go down in legends, that when the western prey returned home with their tails between their legs, they would whisper his name with fear.

 

 

Their village burned. He was told to set fire to it, to move everyone out as fast as he could after they had been peppered with gunfire. No doubt the smoke would draw the Zootopian’s like flies to a carcass. Somewhere to the south, the men of his village were on the move, waiting for night to fall like a cloak and conceal their gleaming knives and polished guns. 

Sihn traveled with the women and children. There were a few soldiers as well, but they were strange faces. Impersonal guards dispatched by The New Order to secure travel. He wiped sweat from his brow, allowing himself to lag behind. The sun fell on his back as they crested the hill, he could feel the heat of the evening focusing itself against him. Even in the jungle thickets, the sweaty hug of the air was suffocating.  
Just a little further. We rest when everyone is safe.” He assured himself. His friends trundled past him, chatting and gossiping like they were back in the village. For a moment, Sihn felt certain of his mission. He allowed a smile to spread across his face, parting the caked on grime and exhaustion of the past few days. 

The water in his canteen had been brought close to a boil, but he drank with fervor, setting down his weapon against a rock. He could allow himself a moment to rest. He was young, yes, but not limitless. The water trickling down his throat, the haze of the day, the gentle whispers of a village in transit weighed heavy on his eyelids. He could feel them collapsing, falling like curtains across his weary and bloodshot eyes. Sleep was a skip away. The pinks of his eyelids began to swarm with the dark stars of dreaming. 

Off in the distance, he heard their great wings beating in the air like continuous thunder. His eyes snapped open, and he hunched forward as if waking from an unpleasant dream. In the space between heartbeats he was on his feet, his muscles and blood rapidly thawing from their proximity to rest. Deep within himself, he wished he had fallen asleep back there and the choppers would pass overhead like silent afternoon hawks. The cruel whisper of helicopter blades grew louder and louder against his ears until it was close enough for him to peer into the darkening sky and see a singular bird drawling in slow circles around them. “Vultures.” He whispered.

Adrenaline renewed his body and mended his tired muscles. The rocket felt light in his grasp and on his shoulder as he wheeled around in a fluid motion. His tail swam behind him in anticipation. He heard screams erupting around him, rising against the helicopter drone. He couldn’t tell which was louder. He traced the chopper until it came to a swaying stop. He could squint and see, glittering in the dark, the barrel of that terrible gun poking out from the side of the chopper. It sat motionless and still, yet ready to strike at the whim of its master. How many of his friends, comrades and lovers had those guns claimed? How far away had they been when they fired, how far removed from the bloodshed were they? His finger was eager, it tapped against the trigger, though his body fought to act, the heart a general against his unwilling mind. He could taste iron and copper on his tongue. His fangs gnawed anxiously into the gaunt skin of his own cheeks. 

“Hold on, Sihn. Don’t do something stupid. The ‘Topians may not see us yet.” One of the soldiers clasped him on the shoulder.

He hesitated. His finger gently stroked the trigger. It was all he could do to stop the sudden onset of panic that manifested itself as a building tremor in his body. He’d shot this weapon only once before. The chemical high from just moments before had left him feeling cold and frightened. He remembered the terrible noise when he fired, how the birds took off in a storm, how the fire had spread and consumed everything. The mechanical and impartial judgement teetering on his shoulder felt more like a gargantuan boulder. If he wanted, he could fire and see death streak forward, unconcerned with the target or the distance it had to travel. It was an extension of his misguided attempt at bravado. The RPG trembled, it felt heavier than before. The tip swirled slowly in the air with strange weight. Every second was a thousand years, and he thought for a brief moment the mammals in the chopper were looking down at him, begging him not to fire. Did they even know the names of the people they killed? Did they pray to their Gods at night that the war would be over before they had to do it again in the morning?

“SIHN!” A feminine voice screamed for him. He turned his head and saw Laao racing towards him. Seeing her reminded him of why he was here, reminded him of the lives he was charged with. He smiled at her before training the rocket back on the chopper, feeling stronger than before; more certain of his duty as a man, to defend his people, to repel the foreign invaders from his home. All the whispers of their Gods disappeared into the chopper’s moan. His bodied steadied out, calm and certain of its purpose. The world became sharp and deeply shadowed by the sinking of the sun. The chopper was clearer now in his sights than ever. The rising of humid air from the jungle obscured things in the daylight, but all had faded, and now in sharply bold outline, sat his rite of passage, hovering just a small distance to his rocket. His brow narrowed in focus. 

Laao opened her mouth to scream again. “What are you doing?! Put it down!”

His body acted before her words could reach her. His finger pressed down against the trigger and felt it give.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "War is hell." - William Tecumseh Sherman


	7. Cops and dreamers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A fox and a bunny cross paths in dreams.

“Sir, you’re going to have to come with me.” The officer was insistent. Her nervous hands were already reaching towards her belt. Nick saw a quick flash of fear in her purple eyes before taking a small step backwards. This bunny wouldn’t shoot. She was too green to let her first day on the beat end like this. 

“Listen, officer, I think there’s been a misunderstanding. I’m not a wolf, see? I’m a fox,” Nick spread his arms, highlighting the narrowness of his body. “The guy you’re looking for-” He took a half step to the side. In his peripherals was a small alleyway. “- He went down Baker Street. I just saw him.”

It was an impulsive and involuntary glance that Judy threw behind her, but it was enough for Nick to make a frantic break down narrow corridors of the alley.

His heart jumped with each step, knowing that his advantage was small and that Bunnies had a reputation for being quick. Something split the air behind him and zinged past his ears. He tracked a red-tailed dart which cleared his neck by a few inches. Apparently they were also quick shots too.

“STOP!” She called out. 

The stomping of her agile feet was slowly gaining on him. Nick’s eyes clamped shut and he gunned his body forward.

Like the light at the end of a tunnel, an imposing wire fence at the other end of the alley grew larger as his frantic pace quickened. He could almost feel the gritty wire between his claws, heaving his body towards freedom. 

The jolt came like hundreds of small needles erupting outward from his skin. Naturally, his hands clambered at his neck, but were held at bay with yet another pulse of electricity, this one more focused and intense than before. The next wave after that brought him down onto his knees. 

Another shock and he was on the ground. 

He brought his knees into his chest, shivering and yelping as each punishing salvo of electricity ran through the organic current of his body, cutting short any thoughts or words or protests.

Everything was hurried in him. The effects of electricity on small mammals could be devastating. Every heartbeat ran fast and desperate, every thought was quick between waves. He had a heartbeat’s time between when the pulses came and went, and in those scant milliseconds he tried to think of a way out. He tried to plead, but his mouth could only open a few inches before another wave rocked through him, obliterating his thoughts like castles made of sand. He tasted metal on his tongue. Something was starting to smell like burnt hair and copper. He closed his eyes and saw blue lightning flicker across the canvas of his mind.

 

Judy watched him from a distance, seeing his body violently seize and then un-seize as the collar bit into him. The collars ran in a few programs, all of which were at her command. Incapacitate was the longest, and though it was only a few quick seconds in practice, In Judy’s frozen horror, in the pain refracted in her eyes, it seemed to drag on for hours. 

Nick at last sprawled out, motionless, whispers of smoke drifting off his body.

The Rookie had slumped against a dumpster, unable to look away. The sickening odor of singed fur was heavy in the air. Her radio was quiet. She hadn’t touched it the entire time, not even to declare her pursuit of the suspect. She couldn’t bring herself to do it. Right now, she could only watch the suspect's body, see how his eyes had been squeezed tight and his eyebrows placed high and wide atop his head were speckled with the promised rain from this morning.

She started upwards, hand going to her radio to call in for an ambulance. Nick began to stir, ever so slightly, and before she could stop herself, she was by his side. 

It was only shallow breathing at this point, but it was better than nothing. She gingerly pulled his body against an adjacent brick wall, propping him vertically. His mouth slackened open, revealing a set of carefully dulled fangs. He pulled in little gasps of air, still unable to wake himself, but to Judy, who had felt some blunted sense of regret, this was enough. It was enough to see his worn down teeth, his unifying breathing stifled only slightly by the grip of the state around his neck. To see that he was alive. 

“Sir?” She whispered, more for herself than for Nick. “Sir, I’m going to call for an ambulance, okay?” Tears begun to bud in the corner of her eyes. “Please wake up….” She begged.

“Sir?”

 

….

 

“Nick?” His eyes slowly pulled open. He found himself gazing up at a darkened ceiling. There was something warm and soft against his chest. Rolling his head over slowly, he saw Judy’s lavender eyes gazing up at him with incredible familiarity and warmth. She smiled. “Good morning, sleepy fox.” She hushed, nuzzling into his exposed chest.

Breathing came easy. He felt around his neck but there was no collar. There was no evidence he had ever had one on either. He bit down softly on his mouth and found his fangs to be the same small needles he’d grown up with, intact and sharp. 

“Judy, I had the worst dream…” Nick started.  
“I know…” She said, sliding up the length of his chest to meet his eyes. “You were twitching and whimpering the whole night.”

Nick stared past her, eyes once again locked on the ceiling. “It just felt so real. I thought I was dying.”

Judy leaned down and gingerly pressed her parched lips against his. She didn’t quite kiss him. More or less, she breathed softly into his mouth with her lips very slowly puckering. Nick shut his eyes and met her lips with his own, and soon let their tired bodies become entwined. His paws clasped around her exposed midsection and drew her body against his. Every touch felt like sparks against his dumbly roaming touch. She moaned softly and sank down against him, becoming swallowed in his body.

They held together, joined at the mouth for some time, before Judy’s eyes drifted open and she pulled away. “You’re safe now, Nick. It was only a dream.” She rolled off of him tugging down her over-sized night shirt over her lower half. “Besides, It’s Sunday. We’re late.” 

“Late?” Nick yawned. “It’s too early to be late for anything Jude.” He tugged the covers over his body. “Can’t I have just five more hours?”

Judy giggled and hopped out of bed. “Five more hours…..” She muttered. “You city folk have no work ethic do you?”

“$200 dollars a day…” Nick rolled over and shut his eyes.

“Since you were 12.” Judy finished for him.

 

…

 

“Well, he seems to be responsive, though if only to the touch.”

Judy shrunk into her uniform. “He’s not going to be paralyzed is he?”

The Rhino looked between Nick, laying still in his hospital bed, and Judy, who still hadn’t changed from her damp uniform. “It’s too early to tell.” He crouched down on one knee and clasped an arm delicately around Judy’s shoulder. “Was this your first incap?”

 

Judy’s eyes averted the doctor’s sympathetic gaze. “I didn’t mean to take it that far. I missed with my tranq dart, and he was heading for a fence.”

“I don’t blame you. You do what you have to do to keep the street’s safe, especially from Jagged-Jaws like him.” He rose and went to Nick’s side, eyeing over the fox. “That’s what you’re trained to do after all.”

The bunny's ears stiffened. “Did you just call Nick a ‘Jagged-Jaw?’” Her jaw screwed shut. 

“You mean Mr. Wilde here?” The doctor raised a curious eyebrow at Judy, letting a small moment of silence hang in the air. “You’ll have to forgive me,” he said, turning his focus back on Nick. “I see too many cases like this. I know it’s not ‘politically correct’ terminology, but you wouldn’t believe the amount of cases like him I see every day.”

“He’s not a ‘jagged-jaw’, he’s my boyfriend.” She declared through clenched teeth. She took a step forward and abruptly stopped. The strangeness of the room came like a bullet. The sterile lighting, the crisp whiteness of the walls and the melodic bounce of Nick’s heart rate monitor all became sharp and loud and completely, imperfectly false to her senses.

“Your boyfriend?” The doctor chuckled. “Are you feeling alright, Officer?” He turned over Nick’s collar his hands. “I mean, I’ve heard of pred-prey relationships, but only very rarely. Besides, you couldn't even tell us his name on the ambulance ride over here.” He laughed again.

She opened her mouth to speak but only whispers would come. Her screams died as muffled croaks in her throat. The tiled floor began to twirl beneath her. “That’s my fox.” She mumbled, staggering backwards. “That’s my dumb fox.” Her stomach turned. 

“Officer Hopps?” He paused his examination of Nick and started forward towards Judy. “Are you feeling okay?”

“That’s my fox.” She mumbled, falling backwards. There was no floor behind her, no wall at her back. Her body landed in a stiff horizontal pose, the weightless chasms of empty space catching her and pulling her off. She watched with dim awareness as the hospital room seemed to drift away from her, becoming a small glowing pinpoint of white light before being swallowed by a black horizon. 

“That’s my fox.”

 

…

 

“Judy?”

She was aware of the noise at first, not Nick. Mammals swam around her in the summer haze. A gentle breeze crossed her body. It smelled of green life and freshly cut grass.

Judy’s focus narrowed on Nick’s snapping fingers. He smiled.

“That’s my bunny!” He declared. “Keep that up and you’ll make a great detective one day.”

She rolled over, becoming aware of how sodden her body was with cold sweat. The park opened up to her. Sweet maple trees, all laden with young leaves waved gently in the breeze. Mammals strolled easily under the afternoon sun which drifted fat and lazy overhead. Sparse puffs of cloud drifted against the perfect lapis-lazuli dome of the sky. 

Nick leaned down over her. “Did you go for a swim or something? You’re sweatier than a sheep in Sahara-Square.”

She sat erect, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “I had the worst dream, Nick.” 

“I know. You kept whimpering and twitching on the blanket.” 

She turned her head to him. “And you didn’t wake me up?”

He snickered. “I couldn't. You were so cute. ‘That’s my fox, that’s my fox!’” His voice glistened with artificial femininity. 

She sighed and slugged him in the arm, which did little to halt his snickering. “You bunnies- so emotional.” He deflated with a satisfied grin and cast his sight up towards the sky. “I’m sorry. I know it was wrong.”

Judy drew her knees into her chest. “I dreamt I had put you in the hospital.” Her voice was soft. “I dreamt that you had this...this thing around your neck. A shock collar. And I put you in the hospital with it.”

She felt Nick’s arm around her shoulder as he drew her next to him. “You couldn’t put me in the hospital if you tried, Judy.” He squeezed her tight. “But it’s nice that you have dreams.” He nuzzled into her.

Now it was her turn to laugh as she slugged him again. “Don’t tempt an officer.”

“Officer? Man you’re full of dreams today. First it’s me in hospital then-”

“-What are you talking about?” Judy cut in, looking up at Nick with confusion. “I work at the ZPD.”

“Right, and I’m Mayor Bellwether.” Nick chuckled. “You sleepy bunnies. So delusional.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Nick, I work at the ZPD. Officer Judy Hopps. We cracked the Night Howler case together. That’s how we met.”

“...You’re serious?” 

“Why would I joke about this?” She said, deadpan. 

He looked down at her, his face draining of humor. “Judy, you’re starting to scare me.”

She stared through him. Her mind was rolling in a fog. For some reason everything felt like mush in her head. She tried to recall everything up until this point, something to rebuke his obvious joke. She remembered fragments of their meeting, but they were false memories of him nearly running her down with his van. She was….coming back from the bank, trying to get a loan so she could rent a place and….

It all fell back into place now. Her promise not to turn Nick in if she could stay with him a few days. Her then job at the DMV, her eventual romance with Nick. It became clear as the sky emptied of clouds. She laughed at herself. “Sorry, sorry. Just waking up from that dream threw me off I guess.”

Nick sighed with relief, though he did his best to not show it. “God carrots, you were starting to worry me. He pecked her on the cheek. “Welcome back to the real world.”

She smiled and sank back down into the blanket. The warmth of the sun covered her. She didn’t need to see the world to see that it was set right. She could feel the delicate wind, hear the din of life in the park, could smell the crisp grass in her nose. 

“Going back to sleep?” Nick asked.

She nodded drearily, still smiling at his presence next to her. It was enough to see him breathing.

“I’ll wake you up in five minutes.” He teased.

“Five hours…” she moaned, drifting back into an unnaturally quick sleep.

“You bunnies…” Nick leaned back on his palms and whispered. “You have no sense of time, do you?”

…


	8. Your lucky day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even when it might seem like things are going wrong, everything is going so, so perfectly right.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQlwx0b_-p0

You're on the bounce at 6:30, twisting the rusty knob of your burner till blue morning flowers blossom underneath a huge pot of water. You boil up breakfast and a bath, not always in that order, lack of quality sleep is evident in the amount of instant coffee that makes its way into your sponge bath, or the amount of soapy water and "musk-mask" that you drink down, seldom do you realize it's an industrial cleaner before you've had your first cup.

The collar itches the worst. Some days it feels too tight and tugs at your gentle fur. Not today though. Today is all blue lights and sunshine. You turn to yourself in the mirror, all gussied up and groomed for the day ahead. The smile says "fuck yeah!" The clothes say "low income." 

Better smile some more.

You dump the pans collecting watershed. Then it’s 7:00 a.m., you’ve got boots on the pavement, the sun crackling just over the tops of low income high rises, the sleepy-soul drifters not yet done with their morning cuppa don't bother to nod as you twist and turn past them. A rhino grunts in some dim acknowledgement as you skip between his legs. There’s something miraculous about today. Maybe the Musk-Max you drank this morning is making the dew sparkle like sprinkled diamonds on the small thrust of weeds in the pavement, maybe your apartment is growing some kind of mold- maybe, maybe today is your day. You didn’t put too much stock in luck, but you put stock in feeling and premonition. A sixth sense, if you will, and as you approach the gargantuan van all cuddled up next to tight alley-walls, your sixth sense begins tingling something fierce.

The van is low on gas when you twist the key in. Old girl flickers to life, sipping down on her meager stock, needle encroaching on the big "E".

Your tail swims, your paws close down upon the wheel and you crank with the feeble tendons of your arm to haul this boat of a vehicle onto the road. She's slow to get going, but with some mouthy encouragement she guns along. The smile on your face widens just a little more as traffic becomes thicker, as pedestrians start to dress nicer. You can’t hear over the throaty purr of the engine, but you imagine fat wallets jingling with cash.

Right now, the weight around your neck is gone. The emptiness in your pockets is far more pressing, and only when settling in for your morning commute do you realize that your wallet is sitting in the drawer at home.

Along with your license.

You twist your rear-view mirror into use. It’s swarming with cars, but none of them white-and-black glittering-red-blue like a low income and out of place Christmas tree. You sigh in relief. 

"Alright Wilde." You turn the mirror onto yourself, narrowing your eyebrows a little. You let the fangs flash. You let the charm ooze like it was sweat. Speaking of sweat, you swipe a snort under your pits, declaring that they are indeed ‘fresh and clean’ like the packaging on the deodorant promised. Not even your dollar store personals are lying to you today. 

"This is game time. Absolutely no shenanigans. You hear me, you gorgeous fox?" You heard you. You nod at the smug vulpine in the mirror, who nods back his approval. You're untouchable.

He reacts before you do. The van jumps forward and then halts, shaking gently.

Mirror Nick turns a little pale. The collar around your neck starts to feel heavy again, you start to recall the idea of a traffic light and the function of breaks on a car, but you have only a vague notion of these things forming in your frantic skull when the lights begin to flash, a siren begins to whoop. 

You peek from behind the wheel to see the top of a meter maids cart, still strobing a red and blue death screech. "Thank God," You remind yourself that meter maids are virtually powerless. More like the janitors of the police force, really. 

You're waiting outside of the van, feet bouncing against the pavement like you don’t have time to run over a meter maid's toy car. There’s an honest grin across your face, because by God you got lucky today. A pseudo-cop. 

The machine gunning of little feet onto the hot tar fills your ear. You cast your gaze down and draw a sly smile as a bunny-rabbit dressed like an officer impatiently glares at you.

"License and registration, sir." She extends a wanting hand towards you. 

You bend down to her level. "Aren't you just the cutest little bunny. Are you a police officer?"

Her quartz purple eyes remain firm, her expression carved from in her stiff face. "Actually, sir, I'd like to have a copy of your license and registration, we can chat and you can explain why you just rear-ended an officer after I check your papers.”

You pause for a moment, and though you continue to smug down upon her, inside your head you're frantic. Does she even have the power to arrest you? You ask yourself. Her feet beat against the tar like milliseconds on an over-clocked stopwatch. “Listen, officer, I left them in my den. Get it, den? Because I’m a fo-” If looks could kill.

“If you don’t have your license, you’ve been illegally operating a vehicle.” She seems almost excited while she’s releasing a pair of cuffs off her belt. They look just barely big enough to clasp around your wrists. “And that means a trip downtown.”

Your eyes shoot wide. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Hands behind your back.” She deadpans. 

You reluctantly turn your back. “Come on, handcuffs? Officer, be reasonable.”

“I am being reasonable. Reasonable people leave their ‘dens’ with their licences’ to operate vehicles.”

Shackled and properly humiliated on the side of the road, you turn around and sneer. “How are you gonna get ‘downtown’, because I flat out will refuse to walk six miles to the precinct.” 

“Familiar with the precinct are we?” It was her turn to grin.

You little shit. 

“There should be enough room in my cart.” She says, spinning on a heel, only to stop, frozen in shock as the red-and-blue lights of her assigned vehicle swiftly depart from her, a haughty weasel craning his slender neck out the side to issue shrieking gales of dumb laughter. She stands frozen with statue-esque horror, mouth agape, brain still in conversation with your loathsome arrest. She thrusts a leg forward as if to break in pursuit, but is held back by the shocking reality of your present arrest. You jingle your loose handcuffs towards her as if to communicate a drastic change of logical priority.

The bunny is torn. The sun is beginning to climb into its’ afternoon position. You’re hungry. The fur under your cuffs is starting to get sweaty, but you know you’ve got her beaten. “Wow officer, that’s really, really unfortunate. I can’t believe he hot-wired your car- Oh, there’s no way he could have hot-wired your car that quick...Why...he must have had a key or something!” You tease her. Seeing her expression hardened with indignant frustration only spurns your childish desire to mock her even further. “But you’re not dumb enough to leave the key in the cart. No no, he probably had a duplicate.” You look both ways along the road. “Boy, we sure are a long way to the precinct, and you can’t make me walk six miles just for a traffic violation, so why don’t we just both stop making dumb choices today and you forget this whole thing ever happened.” You rattle your cuffs at her. She glares back at you, knowing the truth in your words but is unwilling to show that. And then her eyes fall upon your van, and a smile creeps across her face like you’ve just let slip a winning move in a game of traffic-chess. You can see your van reflected in her eyes and almost immediately move to strike. “Uhhh, no. No no no no. You can-”

“I CAN.” She cuts in, still wide eyed and giddy with herself. “Sir, I will be commandeering your vehicle for the purpose of completing an arrest.”

You can almost feel the electricity running through your collar as the words fall from her mouth. Your heart starts beating and your paws twist shut with suppressed anger. “This can’t be legal!” You reason deftly.

“Oh but it is legal!” Judy squeals with delight, moving past you and leaping into the driver's seat with unparalleled agility. 

“I’m not getting in.” You declare.

“Fine. You can walk yourself to the precinct to the get those cuffs off then.” She smirks again as you resign yourself to the un-cushioned back of the van. Some lucky day this turned out to be. 

Judy operates the van with hilarity, her tiny feet just barely able to compress the extended accelerator enough to stir the van into action. You slouch forward and peer through the spider-webbed front windshield. “You know how to drive this thing, right?”  
“Sir, I drove a truck in Bunny Burrow. This is nothing-” Her head collides with the steering wheel as her foot overestimates the amount of give needed to activate the brakes. “What’s wrong with this thing? Why are the breaks so sensitive?” She says still smoothing the bump on her forehead. 

“Bunny Burrow ain’t nothin’ like Zootopia sweetheart.” You chide from the back of the van.

She groans with frustration and eases the van back into traffic. You sigh and lay your head against the seatback, feeling the cold metal floor of your van biting into you. The ride is clunky as it usually is, but the silence between you and officer hippity-hop is worse than the trembling cage of the van’s backseat. You know deep in your heart this isn’t an ordinary traffic stop. This is profiling, based explicitly on the pointed crests in your mouth or the sheathed claws hiding in your fingers. The collar around your neck, the industrious odor of musk-max radiating off your contorted and defensive body, it all reminds you what a shit straw you drew in life. Lucky days don’t happen to people like you, and God never hands others more platitudes than they can handle.  
Just when the day can’t get any better, you hear something that makes your eyes light up. A guttural scream from the hood of your car, like rocks being tossed into the maw of some unyielding machine. The ol’ girl, as unreliable as you are, begins to stutter forward, and you hear officer Hopps issue a “Cheese and crackers what now?” before turning the van, choking on its own fumes, into a small gas station parking lot. You’re on your feet almost instantly.

“What did you do to my baby!?” You force your most concerned tone of voice, pretending to not know that the old clunker was on its last legs. 

She looks back at you with a dismayed expression. “I- It just stopped! I swear, I didn’t do anything!”

“What do you mean it ‘just stopped’? It was working fine this morning!” You prime your attack, working all the hustle you can muster with handcuffs on, arrested in the back of your own van. “This is absurd. This whole day is absurd! Not only have I been profiled, wrongly arrested, had my van stolen, but now it’s been destroyed under the care of Officer…” You lean in close to her badge. “...’Officer’ Judy Hopps,” you declare, going in for the kill. “I demand that the ZPD pay for the damages inflicted on my vehicle in the reckless pursuit of a petty criminal..”

“Reckless!?” She starts. “I just had my cruiser stolen! That’s a serious crime!”

“And who’s fault is that?” You ask, your final blow dealt. It’s exactly what she deserves, you remind yourself.

Judy begins to deflate, her eyebrows falling low as her ears droop with defeat. With half shut eyes, she sighs and hops out from the driver's seat to face your waiting smile. 

The two of you sit outside the gas station. You tongue the straw of your blueberry frost Slurpee into your mouth while glancing around, catching eyes on you. You’re a strange sight, the two of you. A predator, cuffed, drinking a Slurpee with ZPD’s first (and likely only) rabbit officer across the table, nursing one of her own, looking like she’d just been kicked off the squad.

“Thanks for the Slurpee, ‘officer’.” You say with specific attention to her title of ‘officer.’ 

She sets her drink down and turns her body to face yours. “Not for long I’m not.” She sighs again. “I got so caught up in making a difference that I didn’t even get your name. Some officer I am.”

“Nick. Nick Wilde.” You draw another straw full of blueberry frost into your parched maw. “I don’t suppose you’ll be un-cuffing me and leaving me to my troubles, right?”

“I don’t even know what I’m gonna do.” She bangs her head lightly against the table, and somewhere deep inside, you feel a little sorry for her. The whole banging-your-head-into-things-out-of-frustration is a familiar sight. You continue to catch looks as you now sheepishly pull another mouthful of cold blueberry Slurpee into your mouth. Slurpee’s don’t taste as good when they’re not shared in good company. Or it’s her dreary mood that’s ruining this for you. Whatever the reason is, you open your mouth to speak but are cut off by Judy who grumbles loudly into the dirt. “This is a disaster. My life is a disaster.” 

“Your life is a disaster?” You’re almost tempted to tell her how you drank soap this morning or how your whole damn apartment is one giant mold colony. It doesn’t seem the time though. You catch yourself before ranting.

You sit back and let Judy pound her head a bit while you work on the Slurpee. It was one of those days. Hot and sticky, like bad sex. Everything was wet, flustered and deeply uncomfortable. Cars of all shapes and sizes drifted in and out of the parking lot, each one stopping in for a cold Slurpee or a soda. The cups differed from the size of Nick himself to what one would barely consider a ‘shot glass’ worth of the good stuff, but the glares all remained the same; Confusion. The scene set before them was of Nick, a collared predator casually drinking a Slurpee and Judy, Zootopia’s first Bunny cop, pounding her skull into the table softly until the lights and noises of a sweltering summer afternoon faded and grew black in the distance. 

“Mr. Wilde,” She sighed, finally pulling herself up to full height. She straightened her hat back on her head. “The ZPD will be happy to ‘fix your van’ in honor of your sacrifice in the pursuit of criminal justice.” Her tone was flat and dull. “Furthermore,” she produced a small key-ring from her belt. “I’ll be undoing your cuffs. You’re free to go.” With a resigned expression she slid the key into the hole on your handcuffs. You could physically feel the strain in her tiny paws as she pulled the metal key to the right, turning up the pins that bound your innocent hands together. With the cuffs off, you test your paws, their weightlessness is unfamiliar. Seems so strange that the short time the cuffs were on could have such an effect on you. It’s another grim reminder of the collar bound around your neck, however. Yet as you look into Judy’s eyes, you don’t see any fear of a rabid predator. You see a young woman who had to watch her dreams vanish before her in a puff of exhaust fumes. As for you, your van is getting fixed for free, and you got a slurpee out of it. It might not have been a perfect day, but it’s a hell of a lot better than you thought it’d turn out.

“Uhhh, officer Hopps?” You try and get her attention but she’s back to resting her head on the edge of the table. “Thank you for your service-” Your cheering up routine is as effective as your morning mirror gawking. Then something in your peripherals catches your eye. A small white blur coasting into the parking lot, no regard for oncoming traffic or pedestrians. You slowly turn your head to confirm what your imagination dares. 

Son of a bitch. It can’t be. A small, bunny-sized police cruiser, the lights on but the sirens deafened. It cranks up to a ‘disabled’ parking spot and comes to a chuddering halt. A Weasel, a weasel by the name of Travis stumbles from the driver's seat with his hands stretched out towards the gas station like it was salvation from the good book. “HOTTTTTTTT” He yells, pulling away his already saturated collar from his fur. “Soooo hotttttt….” He lazily stumbles towards the building, but not before you begin tapping on Judy’s downward facing cap.

“Officer Hopps! Officer Hopps! Officer Hopps!”   
“SIR.” She says with a touch of anger, rising to fix her cap. “If you need some assistance I suggest you find a real cop-” You point her towards her small traffic cruiser. “Sweet Cheese and Crackers.” You grin wide, showing your arrogant fangs at her. You feel like you’ve earned this one. 

The two of you devise a simple plan for this: You’ll just wait for Travis to come back outside, and then arrest him. Take the cruiser back like nothing’s happened, put in a work order for Nick’s van and call it a day.

You post up near the entrance and peer inside. Travis is balancing a large Slurpee between his two meager paws and stumbling towards the door. You nod towards Judy, who leans happily against her cruiser, perhaps feeling some sense of security and safety with it back in her possession.

The arrest went smoothly. Were it not for your swift hands, Travis would have dropped his Elephant sized Slurpee onto the sizzling concrete when he saw Judy, but thankfully you managed to catch it from falling. Judy grabbed Travis and pushed him against the wall, already slapping a pair of handcuffs onto his thin and wiry wrists. You slurp deservedly on your new drink, while Judy reads Travis his rights and presses him into the back of the cruiser. 

The bunny paused before taking off, and called you over to her. “Mr. Wilde,” She said with a grin. She extended a paw towards you, which required you to set down your titanous drink. The two of you shook heartily. “Just bring the van by the station, they know which one it is. The good folks of Zootopia owe you and that old beater a debt of gratitude, and I intend to see it paid.”

It was your turn to smile. “Thank you, officer. Today started pretty badly, but I think it ended on a pretty high note.” 

Judy nodded and started backing up, only to stop once more and retrieve a small piece of scratch paper from her notebook and begin scratching something onto it. “Here.” She said, offering you the paper. “If the bozo’s at the station give you any trouble about the van, just call me. We’ll get it straightened out. And maybe we could get some Slurpee’s again?”

“I’d like that, if you buy this round.” You smile. She grins back.   
“The least I could do. I guess it’s your lucky day afterall.”

You guess so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on why I haven't updated in awhile: Over the summer, I've had some health troubles that put me down for quite awhile. They've gotten much better now, so I'm hoping I can get back into my writing for Short Tails. I apologize for the severely delayed updates, because none of you deserve an un-explained month long hiatus. 
> 
> :D


	9. Dinner for three part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Judy meets Nick's mother for the first time, challenging Zootopia's hero-cop in unexpected ways. Saving Zootopia was 100 times easier than spending a night at the Wilde residence will be.

"Well, we're here." Nick said as he cut the engine. He turned to his girlfriend in the seat next to him, who had worn her best jeans and plaid shirt for the occasion. She seemed reluctant to meet his gaze.

  
"You still living carrots?" He joked.

  
"Not for long." She murmured, drawing a large breath in.

  
Nick chuckled as he snapped his seat belt off. "Come on, it's just Mom. You've got nothing to worry about! Remember how nice she was on the phone?"

 

Judy slumped over. "That's just the thing Nick. It's your MOTHER. This is every girlfriend's nightmare." She covered her face with the broad of her mint colored sleeve.

Nick cluelessly waited in silence before daring to open his mouth. "Ummm..." He let the sound uselessly draw from his throat before Judy took the lead, hook line and sinker.

"The phone call was a test," she moaned, still shrouding her exhaustion and apprehension behind her sleeve. "She wanted to feel me out, find my weaknesses-"  
"A test?" Nick cut in.

  
"And now the final is here AND I HAVEN'T STUDIED, NICK!" She latched onto her boyfriend with both paws and shook frantically, begging from his eyes some empathy or at least a quick and painless end.

"Judy, Judy, RELAX!" His own paws clasped around her wiry arms and pulled them from his mellow-lime green shirt. She whimpered. "You're freaking out. Mom LOVES you, I told her all about you, what a beautiful and funny and charming girl you are." Her whimpering slowed. "And what a grip you've got." He added.

Her face switched from pleading to mild annoyance as she slugged him a fat one across the arm. "This is serious, Wilde. This is make or break." She said.

"No, it's not," Nick pulled the latch to the door before Judy could attach herself to her seat or to his shirt again. "I'm telling you, you're blowing this way out of proportion." He informed her as they crossed the street towards the Wilde residence.

"Remember when my dad tested you?" She sulked, latching onto the crook of his elbow like a handlebar.

"That was a test?" Nick's eyes narrowed in confusion.

  
"Yes! That was a test Nick!"

  
"All we did was sit around and drink beers while you fought off your cousins."

  
Judy's eyes went wide, her ears stiffened. "WHAT?!"

  
"Yeah." Nick confirmed, making his way up the steps.

  
"Dad said he was gonna 'put the screws to you'!"

  
Nick shrugged. "So....here it is." He offered his hand towards his childhood home. It was a narrow, two-floor affair. By any standards, it was old, even for this neighborhood. Though it had been spruced up by a fresh bed of flowers and cleanly polished windows, these small gestures couldn’t conceal what might be centuries of weather and wear. Pain was coming off in wide, leaden strips, and the door bore a million trenches of splintering wood. The singular porch light above them hissed with age and had already begun to flicker uselessly against the encroaching night.

"You have everything for the night?" Nick asked, raising his fist to the door.

  
Judy did a double take towards the car. "You know, I think I left my toothbrush in the car." She jerked him towards the street and away from the house. Nick held tight, rooted to his porch. With his free hand he dug into his breast pocket and produced a small toothbrush, adorned at the tip with a carrot. He let a knowing grin blossom across his face.

  
"Sly fox." Judy muttered, resigning herself to fate.

  
"Dumb Bunny." Nick retorted. He took a short breath, pressed a smile upon his face before letting his fist lightly bounce off the door once, twice, three times.

They waited for what felt like hours to Judy. She became acutely aware of every sound now echoing through Nick’s childhood home. The slight groan of an old chair, the dainty plodding of two feet as they grew louder and louder like gunshots against the acutely receptive drum’s of her ears. Her heart stopped as she heard a locking bolt slide out of its’ nest, knowing in less than a heartbeat, she would come face to face with the woman who had raised Nick.

The door groaned open, Judy did her best to disguise the look of terror christening her freshly washed cheeks.

“Mom!” Nick exclaimed, releasing Judy’s iron grip and lunging forward with a hug.

  
“Nicky!” Mrs. Wilde met her son halfway through the portal, clasping her son tight. Judy could make out in those scant few seconds a flash of amber fur as her mind struggled to engage with what her eyes were seeing.

The two foxes quietly held each other, both with their eyes shut tight, tails fanning in delight and their sincere love worn across their rust-orange faces. Nick did not quite dwarf his mother, who wore a crimson red evening dress that framed her rather plush and healthy figure, but his relative height compared to hers was no doubt the topic for heaps of motherly affection in regards to strength and ‘handsomeness’. Of the millions of racing thoughts running through Judy’s mind at that moment, one of them was that she had come terrifically under-dressed for the evening. Worse, she felt naked, even when fact showed that he had far more clothing on than Nick’s own mother.

The older Vixen opened her eyes, one shamrock-green jewel of them falling upon Judy. She pulled away from her son. “You must be Officer Hopps!” She said warmly, her tone like velvet; neither overly-enthused nor annoyed, just cooly-intrigued.

“Hudy Jopps!” Judy thrust out a sweaty palm towards Nick’s mother, realizing at once her mistake.

“It’s nice to meet you, Hudy.” Mrs. Wilde bent her knees ever slightly to Judy’s height and instead quickly hugged her. Judy did her best to hold in her nervous whine as she squeezed back. Almost instantly she smelled the subtle spice of gently fading perfume, applied perhaps an hour earlier. It smelled warmly of flowers and cinnamon, just enough to constitute a cherished fragrance and not a cooking item. Judy hoped silently that Mrs. Wilde couldn’t smell that Judy didn’t own any perfume.

  
“You can just call me Elizabeth.” Mrs. Wilde whispered. In an even lower voice, she said “Nick’s told me so much about you.”

To Nick’s untrained and masculine psychology, this was going smooth as silk. He slouched back against the door frame in satisfaction. Told you Jude. She loves you.

To Judy who has broken out in a full body sweat, Elizabeth’s words made her heart skip a beat. It wasn’t the actual words themselves, but the tone and the delivery, which felt like a dagger softly resting against the fat of her back. One wayward twitch, one slip, and it would plunge forward like a spade into loose dirt. Nick’s told me so much about you. What had he revealed about her? What awkward snores or not-so-adorable quirks had been spoken between mother and son?

Elizabeth broke their hug, quietly swiping her now sodden paws against her dress. “Well!” She added with an air of enthusiasm. “How about we go inside? I’ve got dinner going, and you both look so tired.” She held the door open and offered an extended hand as means of entry.

“Course we’re not. We’re both so excited to be here.” Nick rolled in with his hands digging into his pockets, head so dense at the moment he could think in diamonds. Judy whimpered in agreement and followed the younger Fox inside, doing her best to wear a smile as Elizabeth’s gaze passed over her.

The bunny paused. The whole house was completely dark. She could feel Nick moving away from her, unaware of his girlfriend’s lack of natural-night vision.

  
“Oh, so sorry Judy!” Mrs. Wilde appeared behind her, shutting the door with a groan. “Nicky, cover your eyes for a second.”

  
With a plastic snap, the living room became awash in soft orange light. “One of the nice things about being a fox,” she said to Judy. “You save so much on electricity. I don’t think we could afford to live here if we had the lights on all the time.”

  
“Oh it’s alright Mrs. Wilde, I don’t want to impose, you can leave the lights off…” Judy said without thinking.

  
Mrs. Wilde laughed. “I like this one, Nick, she’s sarcastic.”

  
“Well, she’s also a fantastic meter-maid too.” Nick’s disembodied voice ribbed from the kitchen.

  
“Meter-maid?” Elizabeth snickered. “Nick, be nice- Hey, what are you doing in my kitchen? Dinner’s not ready yet!” She started forward.

  
“Just having a snack!” Nick called.

  
“The hell you are young man, you’ll spoil your dinner!”

  
Mrs. Wilde turned to Judy, who was still motionless in the entry way. “Sorry. Please, make yourself comfortable!” With a quick turn she stomped off to the kitchen.  
Judy’s eyes were practically stapled open, though she saw nothing. Everything happened like it would in a dream- sharply outlined yet fuzzy and dampened towards the middle. The awkward hug, the initial challenge, her butchered introduction. It was enough to just be able to keep herself breathing manually. She moved for one of the couches in the center of the cramped living room.

  
“Mom, I’m 32 now, I’m not going to ‘spoil my dinner.’” She heard Nick declare, unseen in the kitchen where rich smells of home cooking rolled out of like an invisible fog.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Depending on the response to this, I might continue with it.


	10. Dinner for three part 2

They sat around the table, Judy plucking at her salad with a fork, her mind racing with conversation topics. This is you, Judy. Where’s the cop who saved the city, who uncovered the Bellwether conspiracy? You’ve been a wreck since you’ve gotten here.  
“So Judy…” Elizabeth’s voice broke the bunny from her mental cage. The fox swirled a glass of red wine between her paws. “Nick tells me you were the same bunny I saw on T.V.”

Nearly choking on a carrot, Judy stiffened in her seat. She looked towards Nick who shot her two finger guns, as if he was doing her a favor. “Right,” she started, turning her head to Mrs. Wilde who leaned an elbow confidently on the dinner table. Judy can almost see where Nick gets his confidence.   
“You saw that?”  
“Saw it?” Mrs. Wilde snickered. “I was afraid to leave my house for days during that little fiasco.”  
Judy’s heart dropped. “S-Sorry. About the comments-”  
“Oh, no sweetheart, it wasn’t about that. I know your heart was in the right place. I mean once everyone found out Predators were being targeted.”  
Judy sighed with relief. “Ohhh, right. That honestly steams my buns Mrs. Wilde, I’m glad your son and I could bring her to justice.”  
Mrs. Wilde took another sip of wine. “No kidding, Nick helped?”  
“Mommmm…” Nick sighed, a piece of broccoli hanging out of his mouth. “That’s how I made officer so quickly. That’s why I’m a cop now.”  
“Did Nick trip infront of Bellwether while you punched her sheepy face in or something?” Mrs. Wilde asked, hiding a snicker.   
“No, that’s not what happened.” Nick declared matter-of-fact. “In fact, your little thespian put on one hell of a savage routine and tricked Mrs. Puffball into thinking she’d one.”  
Mrs. Wilde leaned in close to Judy. “Nick’s always been so dramatic hasn’t he? Glad to see it finally worked out for him.”  
“200 dollars a day, woman.” Nick said, jabbing his empty fork lightly towards his mother.   
“You were living in a van down by the river, Nick.” Elizabeth took a sip of wine.  
“It wasn’t even my van!” Pleaded Nick. Judy chuckled.  
“This isn’t fair.” He said, stuffing a piece of fish into his maw. “Two girls against me, and I’ve got no backup.”  
“C’mon Nick, lighten up.” Elizabeth took another sip of wine, already through her first glass and onto her second. “We’re just having some fun, right Judy?” Mrs. Wilde gave Judy a friendly nudge.  
“Right, just having some fun. You know we both love you, Nick.” Judy said.  
Nick’s fork clattered loudly against his plate. Mrs. Wilde paused in bringing a sip of wine to her mouth, her eyes both angling towards the now stiffened rabbit.   
“You love me?” Nick asked quietly. “I...I love you too.” He whispered. The older fox glanced between Judy, who’s fur pricked up, rigid with fear, and Nick, who stared blankly at his plate.  
“Of COURSE we love you Nick!” She dared to break the now deafening silence at the table. “Right Hopps?”  
Judy didn’t answer. The words were there, but lost among a veritable mush of a thousand other words and deeply repressed screams. She could only rotate her head between mother and son, her ears now rigid and alert, eyes split wide with their quartz-purple yolks exposed in shock, like an egg cracked into a hot pan.   
Elizabeth took a loud sip of wine. “Well, how about dessert. I made blueberry pie. Judy, why don’t you help me with the dishes?” Mrs. Wilde offered. Wordlessly, Judy removed herself from the table, balancing a half finished yet well-prepared meal in her tiny paws. She looked back one more time at Nick, who stared blankly at his dinner. A smile slowly crept across his face, growing more and more pronounced by the second. The last thing she saw before crossing the threshold into the kitchen was of Nick clearing a tear off his cheek.

“There we go.” Mrs. Wilde declared as she snapped on the light switch. The room immediately became flush in obnoxiously clean white light. The kitchen was small, yet enough room for both Judy and Mrs. Wilde to move comfortably around each other. Small scraps of dinner were left out; snippets of spinach, carrots, vegetables, the bones of a fish sat gaping and clean near the sink. “Just set those by the sink.” The fox said. Judy placed her dishes down and started the water. “You rinse, I’ll clean up here.”  
Judy was silent as she worked, all her idle sounds and squeaks she compressed into a raging inferno of self flagellation of the psyche. Why had she been so brash? It just slipped out, she swore it. It just slipped right out, just like the whole Hudy Jopps thing. She looked back behind her to see Mrs. Wilde’s tail fanning happily, a bottle of wine tilting just enough to fill another glass. And now you’re in the belly of the beast, Hopps. She scrubbed with earnest, cleaning the dishes with near methemphetic efficiency and fervor. A glass of wine appeared next to her halfway through her silent duties. She looked up into the face of Mrs. Wilde, who smiled warmly at her. “You look like you need this.”   
“T-Thank you.” Judy whispered, taking a fat sip of wine. It tasted bitter, yet the wines sweet notes became apparent as it washed over her tongue and made for the back of her throat. Instantly the bunny felt warmer, calmer even. She was by no means a drinker, having only had a glass of champagne for his 21st and then more champagne for her cousin's wedding. Right now, all that was out the window, and before she even realized it, she was halfway through the glass. It hit like flood water against a crippled dam, washing away the shame, the sorrow, the hurt, the self-hate. She could understand alcoholics a little better now.   
“That was a bold move, Hopps. I gotta give you credit for it.” Mrs. Wilde said, drawing a wet rag across her counters.   
“Mrs. Wilde, I….I’m so sorry, it just kinda slipped out.”  
Her apology earned a light snicker from the older fox now shoving scraps into a plastic trashcan. “Don’t apologize sweetie. Never apologize for your feelings. Didn’t you hear Nicky?”  
Judy paused. He had said ‘I love you too’, but it was so faint, so shocked, she could have confused it with any other word in the English language.  
“I thought I heard him say it back...I don’t know…” she took another swig of wine. “I’m really sorry again, I am.”  
“Oh Judy…” Elizabeth sighed, leaning against the stove. “I guess you don’t know about how Fox love works, do you? Makes sense that Nick never bothered to tell you. I swear, that boy, always with his little charades and games. Frankly this will be more upsetting to you than him, because, well, he’s a fox and you’re a….”  
“A dumb bunny?”   
“Dumb? Nonsense. You and Nick compliment each other beautifully. Point being, you two are a cross species relationship. It’s a lot more political than both you and him probably realize. Not that I would know first hand, hence the little loverboy out there, but I see it all the time ‘round here.” She took another sip of wine, draining the glass. For an aging woman, she could hold her drink remarkably well. Something told Judy that Elizabeth was no stranger to a glass or three. “The point that I’m trying to make- You’re gonna wanna have a drink for this.” Judy mechanically swallowed the last of her glass “-Is that Foxes mate for life.”  
Judy immediately began choking on the bitter leftovers of her wine. Her mind reeled. Was it the wine? Was it the atmosphere? She felt like she could puke at any moment. Her gut did somersaults, the room began to undulate and vibrate. Mrs. Wilde looked on with mild amusement. “Yeah, I kinda figured this would happen. Just get it all out because I’ve got more. The love train has no breaks.”  
Judy almost did puke, but she swallowed back any nausea and braced herself against the sink, hunched over.   
“I can tell you’ve been nervous all night tonight.”  
“You can tell?” Judy said, not bothering to look up at the fox. She’d had enough foxes for one night.   
“What with the posture, the sweat, the scent you’re giving off...I know how frightening this is for a young woman. Trust me, I’ve been where you are right now meeting Johnny’s parents. Nick was probably in this same situation meeting yours.”  
“Not exactly,” Judy coughed. “I think bunnies are different.”  
“That’s probably true, what with hundreds of kids I’m sure it’s- Oh sorry. That just kinda slipped out...”  
“No, no,” Judy coughed again, ridding her mouth of the stinging taste of vomit nearly spilt. “It’s alright.”   
“I’m trying to say, Judy,” Elizabeth topped off Judy’s glass and handed it back to her. “Is that I’m on your side. Nick says he loves you. It’s really out of my hands now. I can’t decide who he falls in love with, and if biology holds true, I’m stuck with whoever he DOES actually love. So think of this,” she held her half finished glass up to the light, swaying gently in the cusps of alcohol. “As our way of saying,” she slurred, “WELCOME TO THE FAMILY!”  
Judy actually did puke this time.


	11. It's only dancing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's only dancing, right?

You call me late one night, and I'm already at your door, tears streaming down your face. So I pull you tight, I hold your breath, I listen to your heart beat dancing across your rib cage, nervous, scared, faltered, and as the stereo plays a song we both like I smile and gently sway my hips. Your smile slowly grows, your hips rock with mine, delicately and distanced; It's fine. If your boyfriend shows up, if your dad comes home, we don't need to stop. This is only dancing. 

Beneath a mirrored ball to the sound of a cover band, I asked you to take my hand. You smiled and told me you were his, and I said "that's fine, I don't mind, this isn't love, no matter how it sounds." And I adjusted my clip-tie, ruffled my sweater vest, took a drink and stole the night with my friends. All with the radio's playing and my friend's plastered, myself halfway there, I secretly hoped you were having a good time, and that your heart was the size of his. Nothing for me to worry about: After all, it was only dancing.

Many years passed from when we last danced and I'm wearing my Sunday best. I watch with my fists clenched my breath tight in my chest as you split a room of beautiful people, wearing a family heirloom all jeweled and white. I fight the screams, I fight the urge to object, I watch the two of you hold hands and kiss. Two rabbits made by God to hold one another like twin stars. And I a fox, a friend for life, a companion and shoulder to cry. You dance under a glowing ball, the crowd all lost in each others arms, the urge to leave rises and my tears begin to flow. I want to scream, I want to shout, I want to fight the whole damn world for you, but the same three words echo in my head: It's only dancing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All credit to Jeremy Mesersmith for giving me the idea and lines. I just made it into a short story.


	12. And they have escaped the weight of their darkness.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a harrowing standoff, Judy is sent to mandatory therapy. 
> 
>  
> 
> |All credit goes to La Dispute. I take none for myself.|  
> |This copy is unedited and hasn't been looked at in months. I figured 'what the hell, I'll post it anyway.' I hope you enjoy.|

First entry: June 1st, 2018  
Client: Judy Hopps  
Occupation: Police Officer  
Reason for seeking treatment: Mandated therapy session  
Past records: None  
Past diagnosis of mental disorder: PTSD  
Past record of suicide attempts: None

 

Log begins  
Subject appears to be reluctant to discuss issues, immediately denying validity of psychoanalysis  
"Wasn't it developed by some literal motherfucker?" (Half true, but not in the literal sense)  
Ask subject why she appears so hostile, if being here makes her nervous  
"No, just cheesed I need to be here. I should be out on my route."  
Ask why she isn't, why she's here? "You already know, you're a regular name at the ZPD."  
Smile, assure subject I only want to help, and more importantly, I can help her overcome what's getting to her  
Subject bites bottom lip and scowls (behavioral note: Leg movements are rhythmic, either indicating nervousness or a simple passing habit).  
Tell subject that I see dozens of ZPD's officers, and that often my treatment comes mandatory as part of leave  
"Who have you seen?"  
Am not at liberty to divulge  
Subject is openly hostile, keeps noticeably checking her watch during assessment  
Decide on a different course of assessment  
Ask subject about her final assignment before being sent to me  
"It was a drive by shooting gone wrong, and I was in pursuit of the suspect"  
Implore her to tell me more (behavioral note here: Subject loosens up, leg movements cease. Seems almost interested in sharing her work with me)  
"The shooters were out Westbound on Park Place, near the old bus stop. They tried to hit their actual target, but missed, instead striking an innocent bystander in the chest. You probably saw it on the news."  
Note: Victim was a child  
Subject was closest by, volunteered to pursue. Shooters eluded officer Hopps  
"I just...I lost him in the traffic, my car ended up having a breakdown in the middle of pursuit. I got his tags though."  
Does the subject feel...remorse? How did losing him make her feel?  
"I followed him on foot as best as I could, if that's any indicator of how it made me feel."  
Subject is obviously incredibly determined as an officer. Ask subject if she applies the same enthusiasm to all of her cases?  
True, subject is borderline obsessive about her work  
Time ends as subject continues story, allow her to continue for a few more minutes before I end the session  
End of session

 

Second entry: June 8th, 2018  
Client: Judy Hopps  
Occupation: Police Officer  
Reason for seeking treatment: Mandated therapy session  
Past records: None  
Past diagnosis of mental disorder: PTSD  
Past record of suicide attempts: None

 

Log begins  
Subject is again highly reluctant to be in my office, instead decide to continue with her story  
Ask subject if she’d tell me more of her last case (Behavioral note: Subject seems more interested in work than the rigors of psychoanalysis)  
Subjects final case that landed her in my office continued over the course of a few days. (Note: Incident with the failed driveby)  
Hopps was assigned to track down the would-be shooter  
Shooters face and name were broadcast on the news “He was so young. We’d had him once before for petty theft…” (behavioral note: Subject appears to be remorseful. Ears laid flat, eyes downcast, clutching arm)  
“When you’re that age you do stupid things without thinking. You can’t help yourself.” Subject laughs.  
Offender was 20-years-old.  
Ask subject how it made her feel to be on the hunt for a 20-year-old, as she seems to bear some connection to the age.  
Edit: None other than sympathy  
Did the age cause her to be in my office? What was the ultimate event that hurt her?  
“I’m getting to that...This is….hard for me.” (Subject is less hostile towards me now)  
“You know, the family of that kid that they killed invited me to the funeral. I didn’t go. I was...too focused on finding this kid.”  
Does subject feel remorse for not going? “I feel like I should have. If I had gone to the funeral, I would never have been on the team that found the shooter.” (Note: The confrontation with the shooter appears to have been the cause of her trauma)  
Tell subject she doesn't have to go further, subject cuts me off “I visited the victim's home. I had to break the news to her, I was obligated.”  
How did she take it? “Like any mother who’s son had been killed in a driveby gone wrong: Badly. I didn’t know how to handle myself either. I- I was so business about it. I think I was too blunt. She started crying and I told her I was sorry I had failed.”  
Tell subject that she did not fail, and that it sounds like the situation was out of her control (time running out)  
Subject informs me that she feels as if she could have stopped it, that she failed as an officer, and was determined to ‘right her wrong’ by catching the shooter.”  
Subject leaves without thanking me, appears morose, tired, wearing a distant stare.

End of session.

 

Third: June 15th, 2018  
Client: Judy Hopps  
Occupation: Police Officer  
Reason for seeking treatment: Mandated therapy session  
Past records: None  
Past diagnosis of mental disorder: PTSD  
Past record of suicide attempts: None

 

Log begins  
Welcome subject back. (Important note: Subject speaks softly, greets me this time, appears timid.)  
Ask if she’s feeling alright  
“I’ve been thinking a lot about this. I think if I keep fighting with you this whole thing won't ever go away.”  
How so?  
“I’m torn between action and duty right now. In the field taking action is so much easier than just spilling my guts to a quack. I had a duty to find the shooter, I was going to take action. It was all I ever knew.”  
Ask her if she often has trouble with duty and with action in her daily life, if she could explain these things to me.  
“Well the law is just kinda what I know. It’s why I became a cop, to make a difference. I felt obligated professionally to track down the kid and bring him to justice. I never got the chance.”  
Did he skip town? Die? Get caught?  
Subject shakes her head (Behavioral note: Ears once again flat and droopy, eyes downcast.)  
“No, we found him three days later. He was staying at a friends house when somebody who had seen his face on T.V. called in a tip. I went in with about 15 officers. It was going to be a big scene, but we had a shooter on the loose.”  
“We apprehended his accomplice, but the kid sprinted up to the apartment he was staying at and locked the door.”  
Ask the subject why she didn’t breach? That would be procedure.  
“I wanted to, that was my first instinct actually. But we were told to hold up outside the room. We were-” (Behavioral note: Subject appears to be holding back tears). “The kid was so scared when he saw us. The first thing he did was look at his gun, but he just took a look at us and started running before we could touch him. He was so scared I don’t think his head was on straight. And I….I was so...I wanted to bring him to justice so badly.”  
“We had to wait outside the room because he was armed and we were all afraid this could turn into a suicide. It took us some time to find the boys uncle, but we brought him to see if we couldn’t get the kid out of the room.”  
What did the Uncle say?  
“He was trying so hard to reason with the kid but nothing would get through. He said he can make up for all his mistakes if he would just turn himself in. He was preaching hope and forgiveness while I was prepped and ready to knock in the door if the signal went out. I wanted him so bad. All I could think about was that mother. The funeral I had skipped while following leads. Why I was doing all of this. His uncle was collapsed on the floor in complete hysterics. I’ve never seen a Cheetah cry that hard in my entire life. He just kept screaming at the kid ‘GIVE YOURSELF UP, PLEASE, PLEASE JUST UNLOCK THE DOOR’.”  
Ask subject what she did. Tell her it’s okay to stop (Subject tells me this needs to get out)  
Subject asks me if I believe in Karma, if I believe in an ‘eye for an eye’  
Tell her I think it’s a fairly primitive way of keeping order  
Subject used to believe in her work. (Behavioral note: Subject is covering face with paws, clearly upset)  
Subject asks me if she was punished for being unable to save a life, and if this was in fact just karma playing itself out.  
Decide to ask what happened with the rest of the incident. Why does she feel this way?  
“I thought to kick down the door and grab him. I- I should have done something, we were gambling on a peaceful resolution or that this stupid 20-year-old kid would give into his nerves with the sirens going, the media all over the place, people watching...And then we heard him speak.”  
“He said: ‘Can I still get into heaven if I kill myself? Can I ever be forgiven for the kid I killed? It was an accident, I swear it wasn’t meant for him’  
‘If I turn it on myself, If I make things even again, will God let me into heaven or am I still going to hell?’  
‘Can I still get into heaven if I kill myself?’”  
“We tried to kick in the door but he had already pulled the trigger on himself."

End of session.


	13. A night out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this dystopian world, Nick goes out for a drink and has to put up with a pushy bunny
> 
> Written for Thematic Thursday: Drunk
> 
> Drawing by Knight: http://imgur.com/K0Wh6b9  
> https://anotherknight.tumblr.com/

"I mean, come on, it’s not a big deal, right?" Judy asked.

 

Nick glared straight ahead, calmly sipping on his drink. Judy, already three beers deep, nudged him with her elbows. "Big scary predator acting all stoic, come on, show me your fangs."

 

"Officer, if I do this, will you leave me alone?" Nick turned and stared down on her with a flat and bored expression. 

 

"I make no promises, though I might have to arrest you for baring your fangs at me."

"You haven't seen tooth or nail of me."

 

Judy leaned forward, her breath was hot and heavy with alcohol. She wore a smile somewhere between anger and anticipation. Her cheeks had gone rosy with heat. "You think the boys down at the station are going to care about a little predator foxy? C'mon, don't be like that." Her paws slithered towards Nick's belt.

 

His mouth taking an archaic yet familiar shape, it curled upwards, teeth sliding past the widening gap between his pursed lips. From deep in his chest he felt a growl roll forward and spill outward.  
Officer Hopps squeaked in surprise, her hand instantly falling down to the tranquilizer on her belt. She let it rest there, staring into the hateful eyes of Nick, her own eyes split wide and budding with tears. Slowly though, the logic of the situation began to blossom, and she began to laugh, quite drunkenly. 

 

"THAT'S what I'm talking about!" She chuckled louder, drawing stares from patrons. 

 

"Don't fucking touch me again." Nick stood up, earning a jolt from his collar. He stumbled forward,  
leaning against the bar for support. His breath came in slow rolls. The pulsing singe of the electricity was never something he got used to. It was worse when he was drunk.

 

Judy was practically rolling on the floor. "They're soo big haha!" She screamed, kicking her legs into the air. 

 

Nick could feel a hot one coming on. He looked down at the officer and was tempted to spit on her. But he kept his glands in check and made for the door. 

 

The night air kissed his drunken and sweaty brow. He took a few deep breaths and scratched at his collar. Sometimes his fur would singe just a bit when it went off. He just wanted to be sure nothing was charred too bad. 

 

The door behind him opened, and he felt his stomach drop. 

“Well well, out for a night stroll, snapjaw?”

 

Nick grunted in acknowledgement. “Listen, officer,” he began turning to face her. “I don’t want any trouble, I just want to get home.”

“And where’s home for you, hmmm? Think you’ll need an escort there. You know, to keep you from mauling anyone.” Judy began casually strolling around Nick. 

 

Nick sighed. “I assure you, this isn’t necessary. Just...please leave me alone?”

Judy paused. “Hmmmmm, I’d consider it, but I want you to do something for me.”

 

His stomach roped in knots. His mouth felt like it had been stuffed with sand. “W-What?”

 

“Lean down here. Look me in the eyes.” Judy commanded. “I have something to tell you.”

Hesitating at first, Nick did as he was told. His eyes at last met her own. Her smile was half-cocked, her brows droopy. In one smooth, fine stroke, her expression burned, and a snarl crossed her lips. Her tiny paws brought up a baton which she slashed across Nick’s cheek. 

 

He went down instantly, but not without a yelp. The first bright flash of pain came as the night stick crossed his bones and his skin, sending him whirling. The next instance of pain he felt with his head pressed against the sidewalk, oppressively weighed down by the conquering weight of bewildering violence. He thought about hurting her at first. His thoughts turned to anger. His mouth rendered into a snarl, and another throat growl began working it’s way up his throat. All of this archaic and ancient violence, however, was cut short, when the collar began to buzz. 

 

Nick limped forward as shock after rolled through him, splaying his limbs out in painful jerks, grasping at his lungs, seizing his wanting breath. 

And then she laughed. And as soon as the shocks stopped, he felt another weight on his head, forcing him into the grit.

 

“Remember, jagged jaw. You’ll never be more than dirt to me. Do you understand?”

 

Nick begrudgingly nodded. Judy lifted her foot off of Nick’s skull and sheathed her nightstick. “Get the fuck out of here.” She demanded.

 

He constructed himself with a stagger and made for home. Judy softly hummed behind him, turning the opposite direction.


	14. Tremors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written by request. Pages from Judy's diary tell the story of Nick's fear of muzzles.
> 
> Warning: Really sappy and dopey. Hope you guys like that stuff.

I've let this book gather dust in the nightstand for too long. Normally I make it a point to put something in it 'Tomorrow', but I guess...I have a lot to digest  
Funny how these margins can chew thoughts better than a brain can. Something very calming about seeing my words on paper.  
Anyway, I checked the last entry and it doesn't mention anything about Nick, so...here goes.  
Short version is this: I met this guy. Like, a GUY. I know, Hopps. You were but a wee girl when this diary started, crushing on Harry Alitz. Harry's still cute (I think. God what's it been, years?), but he's not kind, not...tall, not charming, clever, funny- That's Nick. Harry can't hold me the way he does, pressing my nose against his poofy chest...I bet Harry doesn't have a chest that feels like down.  
Other thing is: Nick is a fox. So, not like Harry. But a good fox! God I've learned so much these past years, I don't even recognize the girl who started this journal. We've been dating for so long...and everything that dating involves *ahem*  
The reason for this journaling is because today we tried something I've never even heard of before!  
At the ZPD, we use muzzles and collars on offenders. Nick always makes me 'cuff 'em' (He always says that when we have to collar/muzzle someone).  
I asked why I always have to 'cuff 'em', 'book 'em' or 'send em downtown', and he started getting all weird on me.  
We've been dating for a few MONTHS at this point and he just starts getting all defensive when I bring it up.  
So the other night I made him sit down with me so we could talk about it. I didn't like the way he was acting. Normally I'd have let it slide, but he sounded...scared. Which is what prompted this discussion.  
Because I REALLY like him, and want to help.

Normally he puts up all these walls (and believe me, it is RARE to see this guy lose composure), but the whole discussion got serious. He had this really distant look in his eyes, like he was still back in that memory.  
He said as a young kit, he'd tried to join the scouts. But when he was at his most vulnerable, he was beaten badly and muzzled. "They couldn't have a predator in the scouts. They saw the teeth, the eyes, claws...God they weren't even scared. They were just full of hate. And they saw all that, they put a muzzle and collar on me...and here I am now."  
I was about ready to find those kids and stomp some heads, and then he looked at me, coming back down to earth with this weak little voice and said "Carrots. Judy. I can't do this job if the most important part traumatizes me."

 

So I decided then and there I was going to help Nick.  
I had to take some basic psychology courses in the academy, so I knew a little bit about "conditioning therapy". It's something the staff docs use after something REALLY bad happens to an officer. Try to get them back in fighting shape.  
I brought it up with Nick and he hesitated. He asked if he could see them first. Hold these artifacts of his youth before allowing them on his body. He turned to me and said thank you with this weakened half smirk that sounded like he was swallowing down tears. I didn't see any in his eyes, but part of me knew how hard he was fighting then back.

Back to the original purpose for this entry. Something to collect my thoughts. I wish I had a psych to bring this to, to help me understand  
Today was the first day Nick put the muzzle and collar on.  
"You'll be here with me, right?"  
Of course I would. We stripped down (to feel more at ease because hey, who doesn't love nakedness? Took me awhile to get used to it, but I'm a fan)  
He stopped me as I was putting the collar on, put a paw across my arm and asked if it was on the "lowest possible setting", which it was.  
The collar was first, so I let that sink in. he just sat there, breathing slowly, almost making himself take in air. I grabbed his paws and held them. He looked at me, trying to smile while rocking gently back and forth.  
We sat there for a bit before his breathing became even and he stopped rocking. I looked at him and told him how great he was doing. He smiled back at me and squeezed my paws a bit harder.  
'Does it hurt?'

He shook his head but kept his eyes on me. I think he was scared to look away. I got up and asked if he wanted to try the muzzle now.  
I could see the apprehension rising in his chest, puffing it out, a breath held for too long. The indicator light began to burn red so I started to say 'maybe next time?'  
He stopped me though, letting that damning fear come out in a slow current of hot breath.  
"Go...Go get it. We'll try it. But if I want it off, I'll tap on you okay?"  
He stopped me as I brought it closer to his face. "You'll take it off me when I tap, right carrots?"

Nick is much bigger than I am, so I came up behind him as he was sitting and pressed my naked body into his, arms curling around his wiry frame  
He tried squeezing my arms but I could barely feel it. His touch was limp, and his whole body shook with hundreds of little tremors, making his hug feel more like a weak pinch  
'Nick, we don't have to do this. We can stop now...You've come so far-'  
He wrapped his paw around my arm, head buried in his own lap. If I had to guess, he was probably glad I wasn't facing him.  
"Carrots. Please. Just do it." I could feel the anxiety in his voice. I was surprised the collar didn't buzz.  
When the muzzle first came around his snout, his head (naturally) drew away from the cold chassis.  
He took a few deep breaths and then asked me to continue. So I slipped it very lightly across his nose  
He started making this whimpering sound like he was hurt, but with the muzzle finally on him, those became small concussions of noise trapped in his throat.  
I hugged him as gently as I possibly could, I told him he was in a safe place and it could all come off as soon as he wanted it.  
I heard it then, and even my heart skipped a beat. The impartial hiss of electric prongs delivering a small current to a suspect.  
Nick groaned and lurched forward. I panicked, which probably wasn't my best move, but I was scared for him.  
I tried to take the muzzle off him, but he put a paw on me and looked into me with those huge green eyes of his. No tears, but a very powerful fear. Conflict in the way they shook, but a soft request only communicated to another soul. It said "No."  
I asked if he was sure, and he nodded his head slowly, lying down on the floor with his belly up.  
His whole body shook like a leaf, I watched his stomach deflate and inflate with incredible control, almost as if his entire psyche was completely devoted to controlling his breathing.

The only thing I could think to do was just...lay there by his side at first. I held his paw in mine, he squeezed back. So afraid. He almost looked like a little kid about to get his first shot.  
Then I put my head against his chest, falling into the crook of his body.  
My ears are good. Naturally all bunnies have hearing that puts most other animals to shame.  
My ear against his chest, his heart was like a hammer, constantly throwing itself against the cage of his ribs like it wanted out. His tiny squeaks and little whimpers, the ones he didn't think I could hear, echoed across the struggling bone and sinew of his body like gunfire in a canyon.  
I could hear every intricate fear and memory manifesting itself in his involuntary twitches, his tiny moans held back by the arbitrary clasp of steel or the noose fit tightly around his thin neck.  
I smelled the sweat in his rusted fur. It was like some exotic spice. It smelled like our love, like the nights spent making complete and genuine love to one another.  
He put a paw against my back and pressed me into his chest, deeper, like a mother nurses one of her children.  
I asked if he wanted to stop now. I couldn't see into his eyes, which had squeezed shut with the tensing of his nerves, but I saw his head roll from side to side.  
"If that's what you want." I told him.  
We sat in my living room for awhile. I don't know how long. I don't know how he took that much, but he did. He was a mess on my floor and I was going to clean him up.  
Finally after some time, with me resting against his heart, he tapped me a few times on the nape of my neck and raised his head  
His fur was sodden all over, like he'd just taken a sweat bath, which made getting the muzzle off kinda difficult.  
He didn't say anything until the collar came off too.  
And he didn't say anything either until he threw his sweaty mass on top of me, still worked up and shaking. He hugged me tightly and thanked me deeply and more sincerely than he'd ever done before.  
I was laughing a bit, told him how brave I thought he was for doing this.  
Then said he needed a shower (Very good thing we got naked).  
I helped him into the shower, he used me kinda like a crutch. His legs looked like noodles, still bowed in, knees nearly clacking together.  
And his tail! It looked like a wet towel. I've NEVER seen it like that before, especially plastered between his legs like that  
We sat in the shower for awhile, letting the water crash against the tile, split into steam and close off everything but Nick and in a lovely, hazy curtain of our own. He didn't say anything for a long time in there, just kinda swaggered with his eyes shut while I worked some coat-wash into his fur.  
No thundering heartbeat, no stiff silence and apprehension in there. Just the dull thunder of a shower, the hiss of pressure in the pipes and Nick murmuring something beneath his breath, something I only caught in fragments.  
He cut the water after a good 20 minutes and let everything drip off. Without even looking up at me, he said "Carrots. Thank you. That was...intense back there. Thank you for sticking with me."  
'Of course. We're partners. That's how this works.' I told him.  
He let out a small relieved chuckle and asked if he could go to bed (to which I agreed).

So I guess that's why I'm writing in this journal after so many years. I just need to collect my thoughts.  
He's in bed beside me, I'm watching the covers rise and fall, hearing calm air filling him and leaving him. Something about his safety is making me smile.  
And something about the demons he faced down today is making me write this journal.  
Still, he wants to keep trying, wants to let his guard down, and for that, he's a much stronger person than I am.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At least I wrote something happy for once.


	15. You won't feel a thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this alternative universe, Bellwether is defeated, but the Nighthowler antidote is a failure. Find out what happens when Nick and Judy confront a group of Bellwether loyalists

“Think of your favorite memory.”

 

“My favorite memory?”

 

“Yeah, what is it?” 

Nick thoughtfully plucked a blueberry out of the paper sack that was his lunch and popped it into his mouth. The chair beneath him squealed against his weight as he leaned back against his desk. 

 

“My favorite memory huh?” He scratched at his chin. “Would have to be when I ‘went savage’ and we put Bellwether away.”

 

Judy sighed happily. “That’s what I was going to say.”

 

Nick gave her a knowing smirk. “I know. Great minds think alike. Why are you asking anyway?”

 

Judy shrugged. “I’d read an article last night about the power of memories and was wondering which one of yours stuck out the most to you.”

 

“So you decide to play psychologist?” Nick deposited another blueberry into his mouth.

 

“Well, I was just wondering.” Judy hopped off his desk just as Chief Bogo rounded the corner. He wore a dutiful scowl as his eyes landed upon the relaxing fox. “Wilde, Hopps. Good to have you both here.”

 

“Sir?” Judy offered. 

 

“I need both of you on the beat pronto.” Bogo’s tone deflated and his stern demeanor vanished. He was tired, anyone could see it played across his face. “Ever since the failure of the Nighthowler antidote these…’loyalists’ have been popping up all over the city. We just got word of a group of them meeting on the corner of 34th and Pack Street. I want you and Wilde to investigate.”

 

“Permission to finish lunch, sir?” Nick quipped.

 

Bogo grunted with disatisfaction. “Very funny Wilde. If police work doesn’t work out, you’d make a great comedian.”

Nick rose from his chair and wiped his paws onto his shirt. “Thank you, thank you. I’ll be here all week.”

 

The chief took another look between Nick and Judy. “Listen. We have reason to believe that there are larger mammals involved. I want you two to go to the armory and appropriately gear up. That means larger doses of tranquilizer. None of the kiddy junk you two are used to.” Bogo turned to leave but paused in the middle of his pivot. “And one more thing: Be careful out there. These mammals are to be considered armed and dangerous. Just scope out the area. If things seems shady, call in for backup. Is that understood?”

 

“Sir.” Judy gave a stiff salute while Nick finished wiping the last of his lunch onto his shirt. 

 

_____________________________________________________________________________  
“Hey Hopps, what’s your worst memory, if you don’t mind me asking?” Nick retrieved a small cartridge of tranquilizer darts off the shelf of the armory.

 

Judy was already corking the tips of her own darts. She didn’t bother to look up at her partner. Her stern and focused expression said it all. “Probably before I really ‘met’ you. Before we had cracked the Bellwether case. When I turned you against me.”

 

Nick was plaintively silent. His memory of that day, at the precinct, was vivid enough to still send shivers down his spine. “I remember that.” He whispered softly. “Carrots…” He reached a paw out to Judy, but she shrugged it away.

 

“I just...didn’t want pain to be my last memory of you.” She said softly. 

Nick paused in corking his darts. He looked down at his auburn paws, the same ones that had delicately held her while she cried into his chest. Some nights he could still feel her familiar weight pressing into his body, the heave of her sobs, the shuddering and wrinkling of her nose as she begged for her friend to come back. They clasped tightly around a tranquilizer dart. “Thank you.” He said.

 

“Thanks for what?” Judy’s ears perked up with curiosity.

 

“Thanks for not letting pain be my last memory of you either.” 

 

______________________________________________________________________________

 

Concrete skies gathered overhead as they traveled down 24th street towards 34th and Pack. Nick leaned a sleepy head against the window. Zootopia moved by in an opaque blur. From here everything was as it should be. People alive and wonderful, going about their days, just leaves in the wind to him. Cars slowed as they passed Judy and Nick’s cruiser. Mammals following instinct and avoiding a ticket. He always thought it was kinda funny the way they suddenly obeyed traffic laws in his presence. Not but a few months ago they would have shoved right past him. Funny what a badge can do to some people. 

 

Nick yawned. “Mind if I turn on the radio?”

 

“Negatory.” Judy declared. “Gotta keep all channels open. That means these ears too.” Her paws clenched at the wheel. 

 

Nick stared. “You okay Carrots? You seem a little tense.”

 

Judy was silent. Then like a dam bursting, she at last sighed reluctantly. “The more I think about our partnership, the more worried this whole assignment makes me. These are Bellwether loyalists, Nick, and they won’t go down without a fight. Remember, ‘armed and dangerous?’”

 

“I understand that. I’m just...worried about you.” Nick turned his gaze back out the window as he felt a tight blush wash across his face. “That’s all.”

Judy looked over to her partner. “I know. I just don’t want my last memory of you to be painful again.”

 

“Last memory!? What kinda talk is that?” Nick chuckled. “The only last memory that’s going on is these loyalists. You and I are gonna be the last thing they see before they wake up in ZPD Precinct One. Kapish?” He extended a fist to Judy. She looked over, smiled, and bumped it back.

 

“Kapish.”

 

Lightning coarsed air particles into electric wrath above them. Thunder boomed as rain began spitting on the windshield. They’d arrived at the corner of 34th and Pack Street. 

 

“Well, shall we?” Judy parked the cruiser in front of a bar called ‘Gamble’s’

 

“Ladies first.” Nick snickered.   
____________________________________________________________________________

 

Gamble’s was thick with sheep and rams. The pair stood in the doorway, surveying the establishment’s landscape before they exchanged dutiful stares and crossed the threshold into wild territory.

 

Nobody paid them much attention. The place was sweltering with bodies and heat. There was a distinct energy emanating through the bar, whether it be camaraderie or drunkenness they weren’t sure. But it permeated everything, and pretty soon Nick began to crack a confident smile.

 

“There’s nothing here.” He declared while hopping up on a barstool. “Just a buncha’ sheep and ram’s having a drink.”

 

“Nick, we’re on duty. What are you doing?” Judy questioned. She folded her arms across her chest in silent protest. 

“Relax carrots, I just wanna ask the bartender some questio...ns…” Nick’s focus narrowed on a pair of rams at the other end of the bar. Both of them had fresh pints in front of them. One was talking earnestly to another, his hooves brought up close to his friend’s ears to disguise his words with a whisper. They were each stealing looks at Nick and his partner. Nick’s eyes caught one of theirs, and they stared into one another, frozen like deer in headlights. 

 

That was all it took for the two of them to hop up from their chairs and silently make their way out the back door.

 

“Carrots.”

 

“Nick, you okay?” Judy looked around the bar. “Maybe we should check out bac-”

 

“Carrots.”

 

“What?”

 

Nick jumped from his stool onto the floor. “We gotta GO, Carrots!”

 

“Go wher-” 

 

Nick grasped her by the arm and tugged her towards the backdoor. “I think I just saw something we need to check out. C’mon, on the bounce Hopps!”

 

“Is that a joke? Slow down Nick!”

 

Nick was already pushing his way through the crowded bar. Past ewes and sheep and rams, he forced himself through clouds of fluff with Judy in tow. 

 

Rain had already started falling in mellow sheets as the pair burst through the backdoor. Nick looked around. “THERE!” He pointed down the alleyway towards two shadows that had already made it a good distance from the bar. “HEY, STOP!” He called after them.

 

Judy’s ear’s twitched with the sound of metal sliding forward and clicking into place. Then came the *piff* of air releasing something circular. A pellet. It whistled straight towards Nick like lightning that crippled the skies overhead. 

 

“NICK GET DOWN!” Judy tackled Nick onto the muddy ground as a Nighthowler Pellet sailed overhead, narrowly missing the fox

 

“CHEESE AND CRACKERS!” Nick screamed. “They’re shooting at us!”

 

“C’mon, get your tail behind cover!  
______________________________________________________________________________

 

“CLAWHAUSER!” Judy screeched into her radio. “SEND BACKUP, PACK STREET AND 34TH! IN THE ALLEY!”

 

The bunny hunkered behind a dumpster. To her right, Nick was crouched, his tranquilizer drawn. 

 

There was a slight lull in the action, when quiet fell like a curtain and blanketed the alleyway like an invisible fog. And then lightning struck a now black sky. Thunder roamed overhead, and rain fell softly. That’s when Judy popped up from cover and knocked a tranq’ down range. It sailed with orange brilliance towards a large ram, peeking his head out from around a corner. The dart struck true, right between his eyes. Almost immediately his body went limp, crashing into the mud with a dull flop.

Return fire came instantly, all of it missing Judy as she bounced back in to cover.

“Where’s backup!?” Nick asked in a panicked voice. Above head, Nighthowler pellets sailed, thumping into the dumpster with a metallic *piff* “Try calling again!” He held his weapon close to his body. 

 

“Help’s on the way, we just need to hang on here.” Judy said. Her eyes narrowed on Nick’s gun. “Get up there and see if you8 can’t peg another one of them while I reload.”

 

Nick froze. It was as if his veins were slogged full of concrete. Slowly his limbs thawed, and he nodded in compliance. 

 

His charisma gone, Nick seemed to have fallen back on some lost sense of duty, some smoldering intensity kept hidden from the world. The Fox popped up from cover, between lightning strokes, and took aim. Thunder crashed as his body went rigid and stiff, locked into focus.

 

The opposing side was quiet. Neither head nor tail could be seen peaking around either corner of the alleyway. Nick focused on deep breathing. His finger quietly stroked the trigger. “Come on...come on….”

 

“NICK!” Judy howled. A car had appeared behind them humming in the mouth of the alley. One window from the passenger side door was open, the barrel of a Nighthowler rifle pushed out from the darkness of the car’s interior. 

“JUDY!”

 

They took one shot before peeling off. 

 

Nick threw himself in Judy’s direction. Whatever it took to keep her safe, he would do it. 

 

Like thunder underwater, he heard nothing, felt nothing, but a dull thud against his ribs. He collapsed on top of Judy. 

 

“Nick? Nick are you hit?” Judy scrambled out from underneath Nick. 

 

“Nick!? No no no no no no!” Judy protested, quickly turning him over to face the rain. Maybe some would wash off? With her sodden paws she tried in vain to scrub off the rapidly vanishing Nighthowler serum. 

Nick’s body was motionless for a brief moment as lightning flashed in the sky and Judy towered over him. And then the thunder came.

“JUDY!” Nick’s eyes split apart. Already his pupils had begun to narrow into slits. “JUDY!” He clutched wildly at his partner. His hands feverishly wrapped around her arms and pulled her close. His body was already shaking wildly, threatening to contort into familiar old-world savagery. “PUT ME DOWN!” 

 

“W-What?!” Judy broke free from his grasp and stumbled backwards.

 

“PUT ME DOWN NOW BEFORE I CAN HURT YOU! PLEASE!” Nick demanded. He screamed once more.

 

Old instinct took hold. Claws punctured his skin. A growl burned in the furnace of his chest. He could feel it all at once--the serum taking hold, old thoughts and memories vanishing swiftly like leaves carried by on a stream. He toiled desperately at his savage nature, fought to keep the chains tightly around his feet. The world was becoming a blur. 

 

Judy was already back on her radio. “CLAWHAUSER SEND A MEDIC, NICK’S BEEN-”

“JUDY, PUT ME DOWN, NOW!” Nick snarled in anguish. His feet began kicking wildly in the air. They begged him to stand, begged him to stride forward and feast. 

 

Without thinking, without hesitation, Judy’s paw went to her tranquilizer and leveled the weapon at her convulsing partner.

 

“Nick, there’s enough in here to kill you…” Her voice shuddered with fear. “Just hang on until the containment teams can get here. Please, just- just hold on, okay? I’m begging you.” Tears began to bud in the corners of her eyes. 

 

“Judy, put me to sleep NOW. I can’t fight this much longer!”

 

Lightning flickered overhead. In a brief instant Nick had gone from laying on his back to upright and on all fours. The slit’s of his iris’ turned Judy over like a piece of meat. 

 

“DO IT!”

 

Thunder struck. 

 

Tears mixed with rainwater. 

 

Judy’s body shook.

 

Nick stepped forward, unsheathing his fangs from his mouth, an archaic growl rising from his throat. 

 

Lightning split the sky.

 

“I just don’t want to know that pain is your last memory…”

 

Another drum roll of thunder. 

 

“What’s it like…?” 

 

Judy’s fingers tugged at the trigger. 

 

“To be safely put to sleep?”

 

“Promise me?”

 

The gun responded. 

 

Nick lunged forward. 

 

“Promise me you won’t feel a thing?”

 

“That this won't have to be your last memory?”

 

“I don’t want pain to be your last memory.”


	16. Near to the Wilde heart of life part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 1 of a multi-part story. 
> 
> Nick Wilde is a problem student, on the brink of dropping out of Zootopia High School. Enamored with drugs, failing classes and friends with just about nobody, can Nick be saved before he turns tail and runs away from his life just like his father?

Mr. Grathburn used the large center table more like a stage. In fact, he preferred to teach his classes with as much room to be animated as he could. He was a simple squirrel. Liked to wear sweaters to his day job at Zootopia High. Liked to wear sweatshirts when he and his wife went to their acting classes. Grathburn, fully wired to a microphone and projected onto the class-screen, was a whirlwind of motion. He paced back and forth erratically, enunciated his points and lessons with enthusiasm and practiced eccentricity. For ten years his rule as the most interesting biology teacher in Zootopia High had gone unchallenged, and with substantial evidence to back up these claims. The students loved him. Grathburn could reel in problem students like a bear to honey. Except for one. 

 

“MISTER WILDE.” Announced Mr. Grathburn. Nick eased up on his slouch and pointed two finger guns towards his fuming biology teacher. “Mister Grathburn, how’s it hangin?” Both went off with sharp clicks from his tongue. 

 

The class watched the exchange with something between impatience and mild amusement. Someone, probably that weird ant-eater girl, giggled anxiously. 

“So glad you could join us Nick.” Grathburn said, pressing the attack. “I’m going to take your present stature as indication that you’d like to start off ‘Species Biology’ week with your presentation on the Red Fox?”

 

Nick lurched forward only briefly, his eyes eyes growing forward from his skull. “Right!” he announced, straightening his posture. “‘Species Biology’ week presentations.” His hands back in his pockets, Nick eased his way to the front of the class, standing directly infront of Grathburn’s ‘stage’

 

“No slide show or poster board, that’s a bold move Mr. Wilde.” Remarked his teacher. The class stifled a giggle.

 

Nick smiled and did a quick turn. “And if you wanna talk about bold, Mr. Ratburn, you’re talking to the right mammal.” His voice booming with a hidden reserve of confidence. “Because the Red Fox is the boldest mammal out there. Strong-” He yanked back on his sleeve to reveal his pathetically limp arms. “Handsome-” Nick shot the class a wink and an even smugger grin. An anteater in the front row blushed furiously. 

 

“And most of all-”

 

“-clever.” sighed Mr. Grathburn, emerging from behind Nick. “Mr. Wilde, this is not about repeating stereotypes. ‘Species Biology Week’ is about learning and understanding the inherent differences in one-another. But more importantly, it’s about embracing those differences. The class is not your mirror, and we will not wink back at you. While I appreciate your enthusiasm in sharing yourself, I’d like it if you’d take your seat so we can actually get started.”

 

Nick wheeled around. “Anything for my favorite teach, teach.” He said, aiming his finger guns down on Grathburn with two clicks. 

 

The classes only Red Fox was comfortable in the back, tucked behind Riley or Tristan - both black bears who obstructed near 90% of his view. He shut his eyes calmly, and for a brief moment, he felt hot shame burning on his cheeks. His routine in these situations was to issue to whoever was present a delighted smile, like he’d just finished unloading some satisfactorily heavy burden.

 

“Now,” began Grathburn. “as I said before, ‘Species Biology Week’ is a government mandated educational program that will focus on the different biological configurations of everyone in the room! This week is to remind us of the things that make us unique, not what divides us.”

 

The class groaned at the sudden appearance of worksheets. Nick smirked and sank deeper into his chair. Things felt hot back here, sitting in the darkened classroom as vintage, government produced service announcements ran on the screen up front. Another few minutes and sand clogged his veins, his head felt heavier and more leaden than before. He shut his eyes, not knowing when they’d open.

 

If the class bell had not kicked itself, all rusted with disuse, he might not have woken up. The hammering and thrumming of ancient metal hammers against similarly ancient bells brought Nick awake with a sharp jolt. The students had cleared at some point, though the darkness and emptiness of the room was only cleaved by a running projector reel gone mute. 

 

His eyes narrowed, heavy with sleep. Everything became awash in a thin-milky haze. Night vision, a trait that that had served him well in his truancy. 

 

“Welp, that was over a lot quicker than I thought it would be. A lot less painful too.” He said with a yawn. Another curious fact struck him as he yawned. That Grathburn hadn’t bothered to wake him up, even to let him have another earful. He was alone.

 

The projector seemed to be playing some relic of the 70’s, explaining the importance of ‘Species Biology Week.’ Nick was halfway out the door when he heard the perked up video begin it’s segment on foxes. 

 

“Foxes,” it began. “One of nature’s slyest species. Foxes are considered ‘small’ predators. They stand at an average of four feet fall and weigh close to 40 pounds. Biologically, all foxes have what is considered ‘night vision’ or the ability to see well in darkness. This trait is shared among several mammals, especially bats. They can consume a rich diet of proteins and vegetables. One last thing to remember about foxes is their peculiar mating habits. Unlike other small canids, foxes mate for life-”

Nick promptly left, gritting his teeth. “Where the do they keep getting this crap about foxes ‘mating for life’?” He asked himself in a strained voice. 

 

His head on a swivel, Nick checked the halls. They were unusually devoid of life.

 

“Did I sleep through most of school?” He paused as the thought slowly dawned on him. “HELL YEAH!” 

 

The fox bolted down the hallway, making for the front entrance. Or at least where he thought the front entrance was. After a few good seconds of running, however, Nick slowed down. Strange. The hallway wasn’t changing. In fact, it was exactly the same as it was before. Cold. And gray. And silent. So silent you could hear a pin drop. Which he did not hear. Instead he heard something else. Something more subversive, something that made his skin crawl. A whisper. Two whispers. A pair of hollow voices carried on the undercurrent of silence. 

 

“How do we tell him?” One said.

 

“I don’t know.” The other answered. 

 

Nick followed the voices down the hall. They lead him to a seemingly uninteresting door nested between lockers. He rapped twice, but the voices carried on without interest.

“This...This shouldn’t be happening.” Nick recognized this voice. It was his mother. “It shouldn’t be possible.”

 

He knocked twice again, louder this time, his fist bouncing off the strange door with impatience. 

“I don’t know why this is happening either, Maureen. I- I’m sorry.” A strange male voice. One born of hard hours and too many cigarettes. But it was soft, it was quiet, it begged for something that Nick couldn’t place. Was it forgiveness?

He knocked again. No response. Yet he felt as if he needed to go inside, and so, with his heart racing, Nick silently turned the knob and opened the door. 

 

He was home again. It was all there, all as he remembered it. He felt the warm glow of the kitchen on his cheeks, smelled the rich spices floating through the compounded and cramped apartment. Then he saw someone unfamiliar to him sitting on the couch. A handsome fox, sitting with a stiff back and a sordid expression across his face. He looked several times at Nick, staring through him almost as if he wasn’t there. The fox sighed heavily and rose from his seat, leaving no impression of himself on the old couch. He approached the kitchen and hung his hands on the door frame. 

 

“Listen, Maureen...I need to go. I shouldn’t be here.”

 

Maureen. That was his mother’s name. Nick took a quiet step forward.

 

“What are you talking about? You’re leaving?” His mother begged. “You can’t leave again. Please, David, Nick is so excited to finally meet you.” 

 

“I just….I’m sorry. I know I let you down again. But I have to go.” The fox turned and made for the front door. 

 

With a yell burning in his throat Nick tried screaming but felt an absence of noise in his body. Like he’d been sucked dry of his voice. He tried yelling again, but the silence of the room only screamed back louder. He watched the door open, the Fox enter through unseen, and heard the door shut. There was silence in his old apartment. Then, just quiet enough to be heard, there came gentle sobbing from the kitchen. Quiet, delicate sobbing from a disembodied voice. 

 

That was when he felt the tapping on his shoulder.

 

Nick’s eyes popped open, and the world came rushing back to him. 

 

“He’s awake!” Judy Hopps towered over Nick. He could already feel anger bubbling in his gut. Judy Hopps. The know-it-all try-hard overachiever that she was. He hated her. “Welcome to the land of the living, Nicky.”

 

“Well, that’s good. You may take your seat Mrs. Hopps.” Mr. Grathburn’s voice boomed over the loudspeaker. The bunny took one last look at Nick, who was still wiping drool from his sleeve. She grinned slyly before pacing back to her desk. 

 

“Glad to see that you’ve joined us again Mr. Wilde. I hope that our little movie didn’t bore you too much.”

 

Nick shook sleep from his head. “Not at all.” He grumbled.


	17. Near to the Wilde heart of life part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 2 of "Near to the Wilde heart of life"
> 
> I hope you enjoy.

Judy was waiting for him as he left the class. “Hey Nick, get enough sleep in there?”

 

“As a matter of fact, I could use a couple hours more.” Nick responded. “When’s your next presentation on ‘the many uses of carrots’?”

 

Judy walked alongside Nick. “C’mon now, don’t be like that. I’m just joking.”

“Yeah, well I’m not.” 

 

The halls had begin to fill. Like a slow and winding river, mammals of all shapes and sizes made for the front entrance of the school. The bell kicked itself again overhead. Nick looked down to see Judy still by his side. “Ummm, I’m going home now, Judy. You can stop following me.”

“The hell you are.” Judy gripped Nick by the paw. “Or did you forget about your mandatory tutoring session?”

 

“I didn’t forget.” Nick slipped his palm out of Judy’s grasp. “I just have better things to do.”

 

“C’mon Nick, I don’t like this anymore than you do. Just play nice tonight and I promise I’ll let you go home a little early today.” 

 

“Hmmmm, a tempting offer, Carrots. But unfortunately, I’ve already got plans. Got some money to make. You know how it goes.”

 

Judy sighed in frustration. “Nick, I didn’t want to be the one to tell you this but: If you miss one more tutoring session you become eligible for expulsion.”

 

Nick’s heart froze. He turned to face Judy, standing resolute in his place, a rock in the flowing stream of mammals. “You’re bluffing.”

 

The bunny’s head somberly shook from side to side. “I’m not. You’ve probably missed enough class to be considered for expulsion, right?”

“Err- Well, who’s counting how many classes I miss?” 

 

“I am. I collect the attendance sheets for each class in my off period. That’s...uh…” Judy kicked at the ground. “Kinda how I know you’ve been missing class. They were going to tell you sooner or later. You may as well hear it from me.”

 

Expulsion huh? Maybe it won't be so bad. Nick turned the idea over in his mind. Maybe with all the money he’s been pulling on the side would be enoug- No. What what he tell mom? How could he face her crying again. His ears drooped in defeat as he walked over to Judy. 

 

“Fine. But you hold up your end of the bargain. I get to leave early. Kapish?”

Judy smirked victoriously. “Only if you finish your math homework early.”  
___________________________________________________________________

 

“How’s this?” Nick held up his graph paper to Judy for inspection. 

 

Judy sighed. Softly, she thrummed her head against the table. “This scholarship is worth it. This scholarship is worth it.” She repeated those lines like a prayer. Nick reclined back in his seat, teasing some squeals from the old chair. Instead of a graph, he’d drawn a rather impressive picture of himself doing a kickflip over Judy’s head. 

 

“See the stink lines?” Nick pointed with an extended claw. 

 

“Yes.” Judy groaned into the crook of her elbow. The bunny took a few deep breaths to compose herself. With her eyes shut, she drew herself up. taking a few more deep breaths. Nick watched with his chin resting on his paw, wearing a triumphant smirk. “Nick, listen to me. I know you don’t like me. I’m not crazy about you either. But can we please work together to make this work? So I can get my scholarship and you can...God what do you even want to do with your life?”

 

Nick rose from his seat, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “No idea. Don’t care.”

 

Gathering into herself a breath of courage, Judy turned to Nick who was already halfway out the door. “I can’t protect you, Nick.”

 

______________________________________________________________________________  
Home was where he left it. The Wilde residence was an apartment, a honeycomb in a concrete beehive. He got home just as the sweet light of the afternoon was giving way to the cold dusk, sweeping in silently, blanketing Zootopia. Streetlights popped on as he walked home, shadowing Nick in shades of orange and artificial fire. He looked up at the towering apartment buildings, finding the light that belonged to him and his mother. 

 

He pushed the rust-consumed keys into the lock and twisted, finding only age and resistance. He forced the lock several times until it finally gave way, and the door creaked open.

 

He said hello to his mom, and asked her how her day was. The aged fox paused in the middle of making dinner and let out an exhausted sigh.

 

“Oh Nicky, I had a rough day. Work is just draining my bones. Look at my paws.” She held them out to her son. “My paws shake. I think it’s off to bed with me after dinner. How was school?”

 

Nick’s mind shot off in a thousand different directions. How was school? How was skipping class and falling asleep in the ones he didn’t skip? 

“Good!” Nick replied. 

 

“That’s so good to hear. And how’s tutoring going?” 

 

“Also good. What’s for dinner mom?”

 

Mrs. Wilde paused and looked down at the stove. “Stir-fry roaches. And a salad.”

“Can’t wait.” Nick said flatly, hauling his nearly empty backpack to his room.

 

The streets were quiet that night. Nick tucked himself out of his apartment wearing a hoodie, strings pulled tight, as quiet as a mouse. Parked halfway on the curb, a car sipped quietly on gasoline, humming along on it’s stock. Exhaust poured out of it’s rusty tailpipe. Nick rapped twice on the door. He heard the locks *click.*

 

“Nick my man, what’s up?” A voice from inside called.  
“Nothing much Kazlov, how about you?” Nick responded.

 

Nick hopped in. The car was comically small to be accommodating two polar bear cubs. Well, cubs probably isn’t the right word to use. Nick knew them from school, so they were at least his age or older. They were by no means cubs, but they certainly weren’t full height.  
Kazlov extended a snow-white paw that positively swallowed Nick’s own. 

 

“Listen, Nick. We know you’ve been loyal to us. Always slinging what we put in your hands and all. We just wanted to...Thank you.” Kazlov’s other paw produced a clear plastic bag stuffed full of round, purple pellets. “See these Nicky? This is a new synthetic we just got a hold of. Called Nighthowlers.”

 

“Nighthowlers?” Nick turned them over with his eyes. He reached out to grab the bag from Kazlov, only to find that the polar bear retracted his offering. 

 

“Nicky, this stuff is no joke. Do you understand? It’s better than any stim you’ve ever had. Bigger than what you’ve sold for us. You follow me?”

 

The fox nodded, his eyes still locked on the bag, heart racing. “Right. What’s it do?”

 

Kazlov smirked. “You take half a pellet and for the whole day you’re a different animal. You’re on top of the world. You’re excited, strong, unstoppable. It’s like something else is wearing your fur. HALF a pellet though. A full one and you’re too far gone. Too fucked up.”

 

Kazlov zipped open the baggy. He retrieved a pellet with a pinch of his claws and broke it in half. He offered it to Nick. “Give it a go. If you’re going to be selling you need to know what it’s like.”

 

Nick turned the offering over in his mind. Bigger than anything he’s ever done? Up until this point all he’s done is relatively benign crap, and seldom did he ever do his own dope. Worst he’d do was drink a little more than he should. For whatever reason, his thoughts turned to school, to the math homework he still hadn’t done. Why now? Because he was scared? Was he ready for this next step?

 

“I….” Nick started. “Just give me the bag, I’ll be fine without a bump.”

 

The polar bear gave him a puzzling stare. “You sure Nicky?”

 

“Yeah I- I got school in the morning so I can’t be up late. Just give me the stuff, I’ll take care of it.”

 

Kazlov roared with laughter. “School!? C’mon Nicky we all know you’re wasting your time with school.”

“I-”

 

“Listen. I get it. Cold paws for your first time. Just take the stuff, go home, think it over yeah? And by Friday you bring back our cut. Sound like a plan?”

Nick hesitated in taking the bag, but he did so with a forced smile. “Sounds like a plan buddy. Thanks again.” Nick said weakly. He felt like he was going to hurl.

 

“You’re gonna do great Nicky, you’ve never let us down before.” Kazlov called from the car. 

Nick fought the urge to vomit on his way back inside. After jamming the Nightholwer pellets deep in his drawers, Nick promptly sat on the edge of his bed, clutching his head. He never wanted this. He never wanted his heart to beat this fast, or his mind to race at these speeds, or for anything like this to have come his way. Why couldn’t he just say no? 

“I’m not ready, I’m not ready.” He pounded his head a few times for good measure, just until it really started to hurt. 

 

It was bedlam in his bed that night. Like a silent scream, his body broke out in a sweat. He woke up, quite literally marinating in a pool of his own juices. He started to shake. The Nighthowlers sat deep within his drawers, but he could feel their evil from the nook of his sheets. He was no longer a boy slinging cheap dope and running scams. He was a criminal now. And what would mom say?

 

She said good morning. Bright and early, 6 a.m. sharp, breakfast already spread out on the table. Nick sleepily popped a piece of toast into his mouth and began to chew. Earlier in the morning he’d already been up, moving the Nighthowlers around to where he thought they’d be safe. The labor of hard fought sleep had left him a shell of himself, barely able to communicate, barely able to chew. After washing down the toast with a glass of juice, Nick grabbed his empty backpack and made for school.


End file.
